News_10

Footnote: We always attempt to get the news to you AND obey copyright laws. We apologize if, in our haste to get the news out, we miss a notice that it was copyright protected. We are a non-profit foundation therefore we do not reprint for profit. Our sole motivation is to keep our public informed. If you have an article reprinted here and desire us to eliminate it, just let us know and we will immediately delete it, without question, with apologies. arizonaenergy on copyright law FAIR USE NOTICE

Three supervisors with Black Mountain Resources coal company were indicted in federal court Thursday on a charge that they sent 12 miners into a Harlan County coal mine that had been ordered closed after a methane ignition.

An Ohio family recently learned their 6-year-old daughter was on the Department of Homeland Security’s 'no-fly' list, Fox8.com reported.

Alyssa Thomas, 6, was traveling with her parents when a ticket agent notified the family she was on the list of restricted fliers.

Reports issued this week, nine countries will deliver market sizes over 250 megawatt (MW) in 2010, up from six in 2009.

In Europe, rapid growth in Italy, Czech Republic and France will generate some 3 gigawatt (GW) of demand in 2010.

In the next 50 years, it is estimated that drinking water needs in the Kabul Basin of Afghanistan may increase sixfold due to population increases resulting from returning refugees. It is also likely that future water resources in the Kabul Basin will be reduced as a result of increasing air temperatures associated with global climate change.

H.B.306 establishes an energy policy to guide the legislature, administration, utilities, conservation groups and Alaskans toward the goal of providing more affordable, abundant and reliable energy. The bill sets a goal for Alaska to generate 50% of its electricity through renewable resources by 2025, primarily through hydroelectric projects. Wind, solar, geothermal tidal, hydrokinetic and biomass energy will also be utilized.

A new survey conducted by Applied Materials, Inc. reveals that two-thirds of Americans believe solar technology should play a greater role in meeting the country's energy needs. In addition, three-quarters of Americans feel that increasing renewable energy and decreasing U.S. dependence on foreign oil are the country's top energy priorities.

For the first time since the US government-imposed moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico started last month, an E&P company June 25 invoked force majeure on a shallow-water rig contract...."I think Apache's action to declare force majeure is a demonstration of the growing frustration that operators, as well as drilling contractors, are feeling at the current state of affairs,..

International home appliance maker Electrolux has announced plans to make a limited number of vacuum cleaners from plastic recovered from the ocean as part of an effort to raise recycling awareness.

Legislation aimed at requiring California electric utilities to meet the nation's toughest renewable power quotas easily passed its first test Thursday, gaining support from a large number of usually conflicting interests.

Longtime rivals China and Taiwan were set to sign a broad-reaching trade deal Tuesday to draw their economies closer, which Beijing hopes could lead to a political accommodation, six decades after they split amid civil war.

A Colorado appeals court has overturned a lower court's dismissal of a suit brought by Garfield County residents opposed to plans to drill for natural gas near the site of a 1969 nuclear blast.

Odds are most supermarket strawberries come from California — that’s where 90 percent of the berries are produced. And if the strawberries are not organic, they were likely grown in fumigated soil, which is creating a stir between scientists and regulators in California...“This is very likely — because of its chemical structure — to be highly toxic,” says John Froines, a chemist and professor of environmental health sciences at UCLA. “It is very worrisome, even frightening, to a chemist. And therefore it should be to the public as well.”

It was treated as an oddball twist in the otherwise wrenching saga of the BP oil spill when Kevin Costner stepped forward to promote a device he said could work wonders in containing the spill's damage. But as Henry Fountain explains in the New York Times, the gadget in question — an oil-separating centrifuge — marks a major breakthrough in spill cleanup technology. And BP, after trial runs with the device, is ordering 32 more of the Costner-endorsed centrifuges to aid the Gulf cleanup.

Global sales of electric vehicles are set to rise this year due to worries about security of oil supply, the environment and fuel costs, UK consultancy J.D. Power said on Friday.

An analysis released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suggests that a comprehensive solution to our dependence on oil is affordable and within reach, according to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

...the Clean Energy Collective's first community-owned solar array and the first of its kind in the nation.

The first of several sites in the works for CEC, it commemorates the CEC’s long road to creating the country’s first model that allows a community to collectively own a clean energy facility—solar, wind, biomass, micro hydro—and directly reap the benefits.

San Francisco-based Cleantech Law Partners and CleanTechies announced today a new online service that addresses some of the most pressing legal and policy issues cleantech and renewable energy professionals are facing.

Increasing evidence in recent months has shown that fraud and corruption may have played significant roles in causing the financial crisis, and they have been a prime reason for the serious decline in public confidence in both financial services and the bodies regulating them.

Usually Atlantic salmon do not grow during the winter and take three years to fully mature.

But by implanting genetic material from an eel-like species called ocean pout that grows all year round, US scientists have managed to make the fish grow to full size in 18 months.

The current oil market is "in good shape" and no significant price movements are expected in a stable market if there are no unexpected developments such as a hurricane in the US Gulf or other events that could impact oil prices, a Gulf source said Sunday.

The continued power struggle between Hamas and Fatah has left tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in the dark following the closure of the area’s main power plant.

The power plant, which supplies 25% of electricity to the Gaza Strip, was shut down on Friday night because of a dispute between the rival Palestinian parties over payment for fuel that is needed to keep it running.

The Arizona law that the court will review during its term starting in October imposes sanctions on employers who hire illegal immigrants. It is not the new Arizona law that President Obama and other members of his administration have recently criticized. That measure empowers police to question anyone who authorities have a "reasonable suspicion" is an illegal immigrant.

Oklahoma’s lawsuit against the poultry industry regarding alleged pollution of the Illinois River has unintentionally opened the door for state tribes to possibly claim water rights, said an Oklahoma University law professor.

In a blunt message at the 2010 Epicenter Conference that suggested a war between Israel and Iran may not be far off...

A US start-up has designed a wind turbine combined with a gas-driven turbo motor that can be used to turn the turbine when the wind is not blowing, which is on average 70 per cent of the time.

Montana-Dakota Utilities Co. announced today that two new wind projects have achieved commercial operation. Montana-Dakota, a division of MDU Resources Group, Inc. (NYSE:MDU), constructed an additional 30 megawatts of wind generation in two locations.

North Korean officials are criticizing the U.S. for bringing heavy weapons into a border village in the demilitarized zone that divides the Korean peninsula, state media reported Monday.

Chris Matera of Massachusetts Forest Watch at a state forest. He called biomass “a false solution” with “enormous impacts.”...Matthew Wolfe, an energy developer with plans to turn tree branches and other woody debris into electric power, sees himself as a positive force in the effort to wean his state off of planet-warming fossil fuels.

A new report evaluating the water security of 165 countries has rated the supply of clean, fresh water to the societies and businesses of 10 nations at "extreme risk."

A paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) underscores the widespread consensus among climate scientists that human activity is driving climate change.

Energy efficiency is hailed as easiest path to lower bills, less carbon and more sustainable living...Ductless heat pumps typically have a wall-mounted component and deliver heated or cooled air directly into the home, avoiding efficiency losses associated with ductwork.

Chicago's neighbor says it needs 25-year-old law, but ban's critics hope for Supreme Court victory

Why is President Obama suing to invalidate the Arizona law on illegal immigration? Why is he incurring the enmity of even his own Democratic Congressmen from the Phoenix and Tucson areas by trying to kill a law that two-thirds of Arizona and a similar proportion of America as a whole supports?

The answer: It is a desperate, last ditch attempt to rebuild his sagging popularity with America's Hispanic voters.

There is no question that the Superfund program, first established 30 years ago to clean up sites around the country contaminated with hazardous waste, is facing a budget crunch.

Even though Native-American Apache people say they feel the U.S. Government has a long history of disregarding Apache spiritual beliefs as well as traditional, sacred lands both on and off reservations, Arizona's District 1 Congressional Representative Ann Kirkpatrick tells The Independent she is in favor of a recent quest by Resolution Copper to gain access to U.S. forest service-owned but sacred native-American lands.

For the first time in 40 years, Chinook, sockeye and steelhead salmon will be able to complete their life cycles as the juvenile fish are passed downstream to the Deschutes River basin.

Despite being illegal in many states, thousands of Americans seek unpasteurized “raw” dairy products that enthusiasts say cure everything from asthma to autism

With a total ground floor area over 22,000 km2, 40% of all building roofs and 15% of all facades in EU 27 are suited for PV applications.

This means that over 1,500 GWp of PV could technically be installed in Europe which would generate annually about 1,400TWh, representing 40% of the total electricity demand by 2020.

The Ontario government secretly passed legislation giving police sweeping new powers for the duration of the G8 and G20 summits, enabling authorities to arrest anyone who refuses to furnish identification and submit to a search while within five metres of a designated security zone in downtown Toronto.

East Tennesseans driving electric cars will soon be able to charge up their vehicles at a network of 350 stations throughout the Knoxville area.

In some cities plagued by gun violence, the solution was to ban the guns. But that didn't stop the gunfire.

In America, chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. It's a rule that's been in place for one hundred years and still applies to compounds used every day in industry and in your home.

This may be changing at last.

the 120-megawatt power plant planned by Energy Answers International of Albany would burn shredded municipal waste, tire chips, auto parts and demolition debris for fuel. Company officials argue the nearly $1 billion project will generate electricity and steam from waste that otherwise would fill up landfills. And it would be one of the cleanest facilities of its type in the nation, they say, with state-of-the-art pollution controls.

But activists argue the facility is still a glorified trash incinerator ...

CIA Director Leon Panetta says the agency has hired Xe (zee) Services _ the company once known as Blackwater _ for a $100 million contract to provide security in Afghanistan.

Move represents further escalation of crisis between countries since Gaza flotilla incident in May

U.S. coal use rose 5 percent last week from the week before and was 18 percent greater than the same week last year, Genscape said Friday.

In the populous East, coal consumption for the week ended Thursday rose 6 percent from the previous week and was up 17 percent from the same week last year.

In the less-populated West, coal use jumped 9 percent from the week before and 6 percent from the same week last year.

SEIA President Resch announces industry goal to power 2 million homes and spur enormous job growth in the U.S. in next 5 Years

Closing investigations into two deadly blasts, the US Chemical Safety Board adopted late Monday a series of 18 "urgent" recommendations designed to prevent fires and explosions at industrial facilities during the cleaning and purging of natural gas pipes.

"The district court committed legal error and abused its discretion in issuing its preliminary injunction order," according to the filing.

Two Republican US senators Monday introduced a bill that would increase the use of natural gas, nuclear power and electric vehicles as a means of reducing the US power sector's air emissions and building domestic energy supply without specifically targeting greenhouse gas emissions.

A new report released today by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of Energy Policy and New Uses clearly demonstrates the overwhelmingly positive energy benefits of ethanol.

Ron Kaye notes that politicians and powerful public employee unions have orchestrated the city's decline while furthering their own interests. He cites the decaying infrastructure, evidenced by frequent broken water mains, absent street maintenance, neglected public parks, facilities, tree trimming, uprooted sidewalks that go untended while at the same time hefty public pensions and new public job programs have gobbled up the dwindling public purse.

If Abigail Stutzman has anything to say about it, small wind turbines will someday dot backyards across the Midwest.

Wary of slamming on the stimulus brakes too quickly but shaken by the European debt crisis, world leaders pledged Sunday to reduce government deficits in richer countries in half by 2013, with wiggle room to meet the goal.

The world’s high net worth individuals (HNWIs)¹ regained ground despite weakness in the world economy, according to the 14th annual World Wealth Report, released by Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management and Capgemini. The world’s population of HNWIs returned to 10 million in 2009 and HNWI financial wealth increased, posting a gain of 18.9 percent to $39 trillion.

African nations led by Somalia, Mauritania and Sudan have the most precarious water supplies in the world while Iceland has the best, according to a survey on Thursday that aims to alert companies to investment risks.

Archaeologists and art restorers using new laser technology have discovered what they believe are the oldest paintings of the faces of Jesus Christ's apostles.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer today signed SB 2370, a bill that creates individual and corporate income tax credits for research and development, production and delivery system costs associated with solar liquid fuels

Police says a masked man armed with a pellet gun entered the Pizza Pipeline store Wednesday night and demanded money.

That's when an employee with a concealed weapons license pulled his pistol and told the would-be robber to drop his weapon. The man bolted out the door.

The famine-stricken Ethiopia that inspired Band Aid remains hobbled by food shortages. Some 23 million people in the Horn of Africa are at risk for starvation, according to the World Food Programme, which delivers food aid around the world. The global recession and recent spike in food prices isn’t helping, either.

The formalization of the new organization was in response to the Macondo oil spill, and Dudley's appointment effectively removes the embattled Hayward from day-to-day management of the spill response effort.

BP has begun refining the crude oil recovered from the Macondo oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico in its own refining system, US Gulf Coast crude oil traders and brokers surveyed by Platts indicated Tuesday.

Spurred by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, California legislators are working towards adopting the nation's toughest renewable energy law to reduce the state's dependence on oil and serve as a model for other states.

The law would require privately and publicly owned electric utilities to generate a third of their power from wind, solar and other clean sources by 2020...

Canada will move to shut down 33 of the country's 51 coal-fired power plants by 2025 in order to reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions, environment minister Jim Prentice said Wednesday.

A Circuit Court judge ruled today that $1 billion in lawsuits by Fentress-area residents can continue against Dominion Virginia Power and others over complaints that toxic fly ash from a power plant used to build a nearby golf course endangers their drinking water.

In spite of the recent economic downturn, an overwhelming majority of corporate CEOs – 93 percent – say that sustainability will be critical to the future success of their companies. Furthermore, CEOs believe that, within a decade, a tipping point could be reached that fully meshes sustainability with core business – its capabilities, processes and systems, and throughout global supply chains and subsidiaries.

Regular coffee drinkers have a 39 percent decreased risk of head and neck cancer, according to a new study published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. Those who drank an estimated four or more cups a day had significantly fewer cancers of the mouth and throat than non coffee drinkers, the study found.

Compost filter socks are mesh tubes filled with composted bark and wood chips. Besides making lovely wedding gifts, they are also used at construction sites to limit the amount of silt in the water that runs off. What was previously unknown, however, was their effectiveness at reducing sediment, herbicides and nutrients in runoff from agricultural fields.

The Interior Department, which oversees offshore drilling, said despite the ruling, the firms still had to meet new safety and environmental rules before they could resume operations.

Russian spies are increasingly active in the Czech Republic and turning their attention to the energy sector, including nuclear power, the Czech counter-intelligence agency BIS said on Wednesday.

US Senate leaders on energy and climate change policy Thursday appeared buoyed to move a bill this year that will set "reasonable" timelines and targets to transition the country toward low-emission energy resources, reduce fossil fuel dependence and make polluters pay.

EPA has now withdrawn the rule due to difficulty of ensuring that emissions from burning ECF are comparable to emissions from burning fuel oil.

The capacity of Finland's forests to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has doubled in the past 20 years, Finnish media reported Wednesday.

A 20-pound (9-kg) Asian carp was fished out of a waterway close to the Great Lakes and beyond twin electric barriers designed to keep them out, authorities said on Wednesday.

It was the first time the voracious invader has been found beyond the electric barriers in the waterways that connect Lake Michigan, one of the five Great Lakes, with the Mississippi River basin, where the carp have proliferated.

BP said in a statement on Friday the first of two relief wells had successfully detected the MC252 well and would continue to a target intercept depth of 18,000 feet, when "kill" operations would begin.

It used to be that Frank Erickson had no shortage of solar collectors and other such projects to install at local homes and businesses -- his Jacksonville company has grossed about $2 million in business in the last nine months, he said.

But with the failure of the Florida Legislature to renew the Solar Energy Systems Incentives Program, business is down to nothing

"This morning Gazprom received confirmation of [payment] from Beltransgaz that covers the debt owed for January-April and, based on that, the decision was made, starting at 10:00 am [Moscow time, 06:00 GMT], to begin the process of restoring gas to Belarus consumers in full," Kupriyanov said.

Putting numbers on the likely levels of future oil supply and demand isn't easy at the best of times, and the Macondo disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is making the art of forecasting even more complicated than normal.

Georgia is encouraging residents to mine for cash within the walls of their homes and an Atlanta-based company – APOGEE Interactive – is providing the tool to help them uncover a lot more than pocket change from under their sofa cushions.

HybridCenter.org and its Driving Change Network of vehicle enthusiasts have been at the forefront of pushing consumer and policy-maker attention on crucial clean vehicles issues.

A Roanoke Valley nonprofit organization that promotes energy conservation and the reduction of carbon emissions has endorsed a controversial windmill farm on Poor Mountain.

It is getting more and more difficult to deny that global warming is occurring. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a report recently about the state of the global climate, and the results were not pretty. It turns out the combined global land and ocean surface temperatures set a record in May. In fact, from March to May, it was the hottest spring on record. Furthermore, the whole first half of the year, from January to May was also the warmest on record.

Electric vehicles are coming to Texas soon, and along with them a vastly different experience in buying, owning and driving a new car.

IT organizations are continuing to shed jobs this year and show no growth in spending on operations or capital projects, despite the still-tentative recovery in the broader economy

Notions of green energy are breezing their way throughout the country. But incorporating those ideas into practice is still encountering plenty of obstacles. If the nation is to reach a goal of supplying 20 percent of its power from wind by 2024, then it must begin constructing the necessary infrastructure.

As oil continues to pollute the Gulf of Mexico, the urgency of a transition to a sustainable energy future is clearer than ever. Natural gas, a fossil fuel in growing abundance, could serve as a relatively cleaner bridge to a low-carbon future if deployed in power generation, industry, and transportation sectors.

In 16 of the 22 states included in the survey, people who were polled said they would support preemptive military strikes against Iran to prevent the mullahs from obtaining nuclear weapons compared to avoiding a military conflict with Iran, even if that means allowing the mullahs to have nuclear weapons.

Fuel cell cars have come one step closer to practicality with researchers from Indiana’s Purdue University announcing a new process for the generation and storage of hydrogen. The process is called hydrothermolysis, and is a combination of hydrolysis and thermolysis...

The seismic epicenter of the quake -- which had a magnitude of 5.0 on the Richter scale -- was 33 miles north of Gatineau, Quebec, Canada, the US Geological Survey said on its website.

NOAA has opened more than 8,000 square miles of previously closed fishing area in the Gulf of Mexico, because the agency has not observed oil in the area. The most significant opening is an area due south of Mississippi which was closed Monday, June 21.

Brain scans may be able to predict what you will do better than you can yourself, and might offer a powerful tool for advertisers or health officials seeking to motivate consumers, researchers said on Tuesday.

NRG Energy Inc. is about to offer Texans the first all-you-can-eat electric vehicle plan.

Barack Obama is my college classmate ( Columbia University , class of '83). As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University

He outlined the extensive mobilization of resources and expertise to continue cleanup efforts in the months and years ahead, and vowed to examine failures in BP operations and government regulations during the six-month moratorium on offshore drilling to ensure that such a disaster is not repeated. President Obama neglected, however, to acknowledge that in an ecological system as fragile as the Gulf region from over-development, marine pollution, and wetland destruction, some impacts from the spill will be severe and irreversible.

As a nation noted for its slow pace in developing offshore wind resources, the US appeared to pick up its pace in early June with a series of favorable state and federal actions along the East Coast.

Americans don't seem to have agreed on much in the past ten years, at least when it comes to government. But a rare unanimous US Senate vote on Thursday showed that there is apparently one thing Americans can agree on: punishing Iran.

Solar activity was very low. The geomagnetic field is expected to be predominately quiet through late on day one (25 June). Field activity is expected to increase to unsettled to
active levels, with a slight chance of isolated minor storm periods, the remainder of day one through day three (26 - 27 June).

A new report issued by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) and the Clean Energy Group (CEG) undertakes a much-needed evaluation of current gaps in clean energy financing, offering recommendations to address the so-called commercialization “Valley of Death” financing shortfall that occurs before a clean energy technology can achieve commercial viability.

The region's largest solar power station will soon reduce Pittsfield's dependency on fossil fuels and could jumpstart the development of the William Stanley Business Park.

Solar cell efficiency is the rate at which the cells capture and convert sunlight into energy. The 24.2 percent efficiency record for large-scale silicon wafers was confirmed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL)

The inclusion of “free, prior, and informed consent” would, theoretically, protect indigenous peoples from unfair treatment in the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) deals that are under way as part of international climate agreements. Many indigenous peoples organizations are concerned that groups may be coerced into REDD benefit-sharing agreements or forced off their land entirely.

Earthquakes are often imagined as opening up large gaps in the land, sinking islands and the such. It is much harder in real life to see this change. NASA has recently released the first ever airborne radar images of the deformation in Earth's surface caused by a major earthquake -- the magnitude 7.2 temblor that rocked Mexico's state of Baja California and parts of the American Southwest on April 4, 2010.

As a venture capitalist active in emerging technologies, I meet with countless entrepreneurs looking for seed capital. Many of the start-up founders I meet are scientists with PhD's. These individuals are brilliant - indeed they are passionate about their ideas, inventions and products - but too often they lack the business and marketing acumen they need to turn ideas into successful companies

Many say that the situation in Greece is a harbinger of what is coming to the United States. They are right. But first it will come to states like New York, California and Michigan that are stretched way beyond their means and deeply in debt.

Until now, the problems in these states have been papered over by federal aid.

Whilst all are devastated by the effects it has on nature and the floral and faunal world, there seems to be a dichotomy on what this spill actually means.

Whilst in the Peak Oil movement the simple fact that BP was drilling for a field with an estimated reserve of apparently only 50 mm barrel, seen as a sign how desperate the world is for new reserves and the difficulties oil companies are prepared to go through to find new oil, other analysts have a different story. v According to another reading, the BP-leak is much more than an instrument malfunctioning, causing a spill of hitherto unknown dimensions

Qualifying solar, wind, biomass or hydroelectric projects of up to 200 kilowatts will be eligible for the Generation Partners incentives, which include a $1,000 payment to offset startup costs.

The UK's carbon dioxide emissions rose 29% between 1990 and 2008 if the carbon content of imported goods is included in the calculation, well-known environment analyst and commentator George Monbiot told the Economist's UK Energy Summit in London late Thursday.

Just outside Phoenix, Arizona, sits a field of dishes reflecting the hot desert sun. Pulling up to the humming devices, installed by Stirling Energy Systems (SES) and Tessera Solar, the cars passing by on an adjacent road are dwarfed by their size.

But there are growing signs that a number of large utilities in Asia and Europe are poised to enter the medium- and long-term markets for substantial quantities of uranium, several market sources said. That activity should result in a major move up in the medium- and long-term prices, said one analyst, adding that spot prices will likely follow suit.

Existing home sales in the US dropped 2.2% in May to 5.66 million annualized units from the previous month’s 5.79 million (revised from 5.77 million). Market expectations had been for a strong increase to 6.12 million annualized units. Home prices, however, increased, with the median price climbing 2.7% relative to May 2009.

New home sales in the US plummeted by a record 32.7% from 446,000 units in April (revised from the initially reported 504,000 units) to a record low annual pace of 300,000 units in May, the first month following the expiration of the Federal government’s homebuyers’ tax credit. Market expectations going into the report were for a more modest 18.7% decline.

Carbon dioxide seems to be the evil nemesis in a world preoccupied with its contributions to climate change. The less CO2 you emit, it seems, the better citizen you are, and with good reason. But at algae-to-biofuel facilities across the nation, carbon dioxide is not only not the enemy, it's an essential partner to helping achieve a low-carbon future.

Maryland energy regulators have ordered the state's utilities to provide better and more up-to-date information on prices for consumers shopping for electricity.

Power companies are split on a possible climate bill that would target only utilities, exempting transportation and manufacturing.

At the moment, the bill is only in the talking stages,..

The two sites will serve as electric distribution laboratories to help Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. solve the challenges inherent in adding solar panels and wind turbines into the electricity generation mix.

Officials have found an 18-inch crack in a fiberglass cooling tower pipe at Vermont's Yankee nuclear reactor, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission confirms.

Texas, United States Demand for wind energy is down. Valuations of wind farms are decreasing. And competition is getting more fierce. It's a tough market out there – so what is a wind company to do? Innovate.

“That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.
–Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849

Today BP reiterated its pledge to clean up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and to pay "all legitimate claims" arising from the spill, even though another part owner of the oil leasehold prospect is disputing its responsibility for costs associated with the incident.

Anadarko Petroleum Corporation today refused to accept responsibility for oil spill removal costs and damages

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers today suspended the use of a fast-track nationwide permit, Nationwide Permit 21, for mountaintop removal mining operations in the six states of the Appalachian region.

Now, proposed surface coal mining projects that involve discharges of dredged or fill material into waters of the United States will have to go through the individual permit process to obtain Department of the Army authorization under the Clean Water Act.

One-fifth of the world's population is dependent on water from the Brahmaputra, Indus, Ganges, Yangtze and Yellow rivers which are fed by melt water from the Himalayas. Initially it was thought that all the Asian river basins would be similarly impacted by climate change, which would both reduce the amount of water available and harm food security from a reduction in water supplied from glacial reserves. Indeed there has been recent controversy about the extent of glacial melt in this area.

the majority of bankers are optimistic about the U.S. economy in the coming months, with 45 percent expecting it to improve in the next six months. This is a statistically significant improvement over how bankers felt about the U.S. economy six months ago when less than one-quarter (24%) said that they expected the economy to improve.

Until the 19th century, Cherokee people lived by a clan system and identified themselves with their mothers’ clans. They had no concept of a full blood or half blood and were Cherokee if they had a clan.

The Gulf of Mexico could turn into a giant dead zone if some means cannot be found to staunch the flow of oil and toxic gases emerging from the damaged well beneath the Deepwater Horizon. Industry insiders who understand the engineering of wells are beginning to speak openly among themselves of an unmitigated disaster.

A BP document has revealed the company estimated that 100,000 barrels of oil a day could, in theory, flow from the ruptured Gulf of Mexico well.

Thus over the last four years Canada averaged but a single paediatric flu-associated death per year (not having severe chronic health issues) among its paediatric population of 7.86 million,..Compared on a per capita basis, the U.S. exhibits a stunning 3.2 times death rate over Canada..

“The Justices’ decision today means that the selling and planting of Roundup Ready Alfalfa is illegal.

The 40-hour class was a minimum requirement to be considered for a position with Cherokee CRC, the tribe’s environmental company that is sending people to the Gulf.

A year after criticizing U.S. fiscal policy as “irresponsible,” China’s leaders are showing increasing confidence in President Barack Obama’s leadership of the American economy.

China boosted holdings of Treasury notes and bonds by 2.6 percent to $900.2 billion in March and April, after reducing its stake by 6.5 percent from November through February...

Forecasts of a never-ending rise in Chinese demand growth are not taking into account a Chinese government that is determined to rein in those increases, according to a leading analyst of the Asia-Pacific region.

Facing growing worldwide pressure, China's central bank said Saturday it is prepared to allow the country's currency to float more freely against the dollar and other foreign currencies.

China is set to expand its nuclear power generation capacity to 70 GW by 2020 from the current 9.1 GW, a Japanese government official told reporters Saturday at the APEC meeting in Fukui, Japan.

Two prominent climate scientists - one from Great Britain and one from the United States - have been are the winners of the 2010 Blue Planet Prize, an international environmental award which is considered to be Japan's equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

By the time you finish reading this, two people in the U.S. will have suffered a stroke, or brain attack. Strokes are the third leading cause of death in the United States and claimed over 130,000 lives last year. Of those who survive, hundreds are left debilitated every day. Ischemic strokes, a blood clot or break in blood vessels in the brain, are responsible for 80% of all strokes. Fast treatment is critical;

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took over a foreclosed home roughly every 90 seconds during the first three months of the year. They owned 163,828 houses at the end of March, a virtual city with more houses than Seattle. The mortgage finance companies, created by Congress to help Americans buy homes, have become two of the nation’s largest landlords.

When Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn A-in-chut-Atleo’s grandmother heard the Canadian government’s Apology for Indian Residential Schools, she said, “It’s like they’re just beginning to see us.”

Europe will import its first solar-generated electricity from North Africa within the next five years, European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said in an interview on Sunday.

GM has announced that early adopters (in certain cities) will be eligible for one of 4,400 free home charging stations. The 240-volt fast-charge station deal is tied to a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) program which aims to assess electric vehicle charging infrastructure requirements, meaning those who take up the offer will be required to share data on charging and use of their vehicle.

When the Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred on April 20, the American environmental movement was already suffering perhaps the lowest morale of its 40-year existence. What had become environmentalists' primary mission-to convince the world to do something about climate change-was, after a few hopeful years, rapidly slipping away from them. Climate activists were being outmaneuvered by the highly superior political-media operation of their fossil-fuel-industry-funded opponents.

For the third year in a row, violent crime has declined in the United States while increasing numbers of American citizens own firearms and are licensed to carry, a trend that belies predictions of anti-gunners that more guns will result in more crime, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman rejected as “misinformation” concerns raised by critics that he would want the U.S. to be able to shut down the Internet, but stressed that in “times of war” the U.S. needed more power over U.S. cyberspace.

New auto-emission rules and a growing market for plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles are spawning investment in quick-charge stations across California.

US oil executives can work to distance themselves from BP's Macondo disaster all they want, but they will still be joined at the hip when all the debate boils down to answering THE ultimate question that now faces offshore drilling.

That question: What can you do to stop a runaway well in 5,000 feet of water if the blowout preventer has failed?

The bio-tech company Monsanto can sell genetically modified seeds before safety tests on them are completed, the US Supreme Court has ruled.

Oakhurst Dairy Inc. is being sued by Monsanto Co., which alleges that Oakhurst’s marketing campaign that touts its milk as being free of artificial growth hormones is misleading.

Called "Enough is Enough: Tribal Voices Must Be Heard," the Southwestern Tribal Summit was held to share, collect and disseminate information from Tribal people/representatives with the goal of submitting that information to the United Nations. Much of the information includes examples of infringements/injustices suffered by Southwestern U.S. Tribes since they became wards of the U.S. Government.

The world's oceans are virtually choking on rising greenhouse gases, destroying marine ecosystems and breaking down the food chain -- irreversible changes that have not occurred for several million years, a new study says.

The changes could have dire consequences for hundreds of millions of people around the globe who rely on oceans for their livelihoods.

"We now have the science and data needed to take the first steps toward making wind energy projects a reality for New Jersey," Commissioner Bob Martin said in a written statement.

Officials said the $7 million study, meant to provide a scientific baseline to direct planning for the turbines, should serve as a model for other states. The final report is expected in early next month.

In North Carolina, a grass-roots segment of gun rights advocates increasingly calls for firearms displayed as blatantly as a ballpoint pen in a shirt pocket

Solar activity has been very low. No flares occurred during the past 24 hours. Region 1082 (N27W10) is growing slowly but was quiet and stable. Solar activity is expected to be very low with a slight chance for an isolated C-class event. The geomagnetic field has been quiet. The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit was at high levels today.

Gen-M, "Generation Monsanto," the first generation of humans force-fed genetically modified foods, hasn't reached reproductive age yet (they were born in the late 1990s). But, if a critical mass of animal feeding studies are any indication, the millennial generation, reared on Food Inc.'s unlabeled "Frankenfoods" can look forward to a long-term epidemic of cancer, food allergies, sterility, learning disabilities, and birth defects.

With time running out for the U.S. Senate to debate complicated and controversial climate change legislation, key players will huddle this week to try to come up with a plan for passing an energy/environment bill this year.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers said they determined the use of carbon nanotubes can produce a significant increase -- up to tenfold -- in the amount of power the battery could deliver from a given weight of material, compared with a conventional lithium-ion battery.

Unacceptable culture within firms was a major contributor to the financial crisis and so regulators should play a greater role in judging how culture drives firms’ behaviour and impacts on society as a whole, according to the chief executive of the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

They sound like something from outer space. Well, actually they are. Geomagnetic disturbances can destroy satellites and power grids.

Scientists have the tools to provide some notice when the geomagnetic storms are ready to hit Earth. But the utility industry thinks it can do a better job of preparing for solar weather.

It wasn’t until seven weeks after the BP oil well began gushing that the company acknowledged oil remained hidden under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, and it continues to dispute the extent of miles-long submerged plumes.

Researchers in a wide variety of fields know that how you organize your environment — from where you stand in fitness class to the place you choose to store your meds — has a surprising effect on everything from your weight to your chances of staying well. In other words, when it comes to how you feel, it’s not just what you do, it’s where you do it. Here, surprisingly bad locales for your health — and the best places to optimize it.

Arsenic is an extremely potent carcinogen and toxic to vital organs such as the liver, skin, kidney, and cardiovascular system. A common pathway of human exposure is through drinking water. Previous studies that assessed the long-term exposure to arsenic in drinking water have lacked resolution and rely too heavily on retrospective analysis.

When the British supermarket giant Tesco decided to start labeling its produce with ''food miles'' to let people know how far it traveled before reaching the shelf, the move was greeted with a bizarre mixture of fear, derision and relief.

A tropical wave spawning a large area of thunderstorms in the eastern Caribbean Sea could develop into a tropical cyclone over the next couple of days, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on Monday.

Special forces were immediately sent to reinforce the border area where the clashes occurred and Turkish warplanes bombed detected Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq the military said, without providing any further details.

Summer-like temperatures arrived in the Tennessee Valley last Monday, causing residents to turn to their air conditioners for relief. But that relief comes at a price, which is increasing.

Despite ongoing efforts to wean itself off the teat of foreign oil, the U.S. car market is still almost twice as polluting as Europe and Japan.

Ukraine is ready to move additional volumes of natural gas to Europe if the gas debt dispute between Russia and Belarus escalates to a point where supply disruptions to the region occur, state-owned Naftogaz Ukrayiny said Tuesday.

Improvements to older homes could help cut energy use by more than 20%, according to a new study sponsored by the U.S. Green Building Council and the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

There were new signs over the weekend that Democrats in the US Congress and Obama administration may be considering a bill that would cap carbon from the utility sector only, rather than legislation to cover several sectors.

...now, delays are not the problem. Far fewer actions themselves are being taken, even though industry critics say they continue to see promotions that illegally market unapproved uses of a drug, understate risks, overstate benefits or make claims not backed up by studies, in an industry that is spending more than ever to promote its products.

The Salt River Project is spending approximately $550 million to fit the facility's power generating units with two new scrubbers and new burners.

The burners are designed to lower the output of nitric-oxide and the new scrubbers will reduce the facilities output of sulfur-dioxide. The company has also agreed to install a selective catalytic reduction system (SRCS) to further lower its nitric oxide emmissions

A yellow submarine has helped to solve a puzzle about one of Antarctica's fastest-melting glaciers, adding to concerns about how climate change may push up world sea levels, scientists said Sunday...

Antarctica is key to predicting the rise in sea levels caused by global warming -- it has enough ice to raise sea levels by 57 meters (187 ft) if it ever all melted. Even a tiny thaw at the fringes could swamp coasts from Bangladesh to Florida.

It's a little hard to swallow: more than 85 percent of kids' drinks contain so much lead they may exceed federal limits for young children.

Both organic and conventional juices were among the lead-tainted products, according to the Environmental Law Foundation...

Six days before the Deepwater Horizon explosion that broke the wellhead still gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, a BP drilling engineer called it a "nightmare well."

On April 14, drilling engineer Brian Morel e-mailed a colleague about the BP's options for securing the well with cement. He wrote, "this has been [a] nightmare well which has everyone all over the place."

The aim of this analysis is to provide a detailed, consistent fact base by quantifying the economic impact of policy options and providing a common analytic approach for assessing those options. ClimateWorks takes no position on legislation.

While Arctic sea ice continues to shrink as the world warms, the ice around Antarctica is actually growing, thanks to the influence of the ozone hole over the southernmost continent, scientists have reported.

But the south polar growth won't be permanent, they warn.

Summer is just around the corner, and as the temperature rises, so does water use, as Americans head outdoors to embrace time-honored summer rituals from washing the car to watering the lawn. In fact, according to the EPA's WaterSense program, water usage on a peak day in the average American home spikes to 1,000 gallons per day, compared to 260 gallons off-peak.

The nuclear industry could end up facing no risk under massive tax break subsidies in the Kerry-Lieberman climate bill, according to an important new analysis conducted for Friends of the Earth by the research organization Earth Track. These tax breaks totaling $9.7 billion to $57.3 billion (depending on the type and number of reactors) would come on top of the Kerry-Lieberman measure’s lucrative $35.5 billion addition to the more than $22.5 billion in loan guarantees already slated for nuclear power.

BP Plc rebounded the most in 19 months and the cost of insuring the company against default fell after an agreement to phase in payments to a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

It’s been a hot topic for a few years now. And certainly the potential for incorporating algae as a key feedstock for future biofuel production is massive.

But the sobering fact is that we're at least a good eight to ten years from seeing any kind of real, commercially-ready product. At least at the volumes that could allow for meaningful market penetration.

According to a new state list of polluted waterways, more than 90% of Californians live within 10 miles of a severely polluted waterway.

Other market participants, however, said they saw the move as a clear message, for anyone still in doubt, that Fannie and Freddie are government tools for fixing the housing market, no longer independent companies that can be traded for their worth

In 2008, total U.S. power generation was 4.1 million GWh. In 2009, that fell by 4 percent, to 3.9 million. That's a 4 percent reduction -- clearly the result of the economic slowdown. Nothing surprising there.

What's interesting, though, is how generation shifted by fuel type. Over the same year, coal-fired power generation fell by 11 percent, from almost 2 million GWh to just under 1.8 million.

The concern from the biomass industry is that the study's statement on coal, which in contrast was "in lights" and grabbed national headlines, is being cited as an authoritative position.

Electric vehicles are on course to make their debut this fall. But they got an unexpected boost in the wake of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers has just sponsored legislation to advance the cause.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) analysis of the American Power Act discussion draft, which the agency released today, shows the legislation would dramatically cut global warming pollution, lower household energy bills through 2030, and only marginally increase overall household costs between 2030 and 2050. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) called the bill “a low cost investment that would help create the clean energy jobs of the future and avoid the much higher costs of doing nothing.”

The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to start the controversial process of reclassifying high-speed Internet access to give the agency more authority over service providers to prevent disparate treatment of customers.

While fish living in the Emory River near where 5.4 million yards of coal ash spilled from failed Tennessee Valley Authority containment ponds have ingested small amounts of pollutants, overall the fish are faring better than expected, researchers say.

The ecological impact of the recent oil spill in the gulf is obvious. Now is the time to reflect on the resulting business impact, what could have been done to prevent it and steps we can take with our business partners to prevent a similar issue.

The 111 million-acre Ogallala Aquifer is threatened by both contamination -- from fertilizer and pesticide run-off, animal waste and possibly enormous amounts of radioactive waste buried underground -- and overuse.

The lighting sector is on the edge of a spectacular revolution, a shift from the century-old, inefficient incandescent light bulb to far more efficient technologies. Perhaps the quickest, most profitable way to reduce electricity use worldwide—thus cutting carbon emissions—is simply to change light bulbs.

In the ten years that the award has been given to individuals who have shown an extraordinary commitment and leadership in the fight against slavery, Germino is the first US-based recipient.

Eleven states and Washington, D.C., have created the Transportation and Climate Initiative, a regional group aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions through transportation improvements.

Israel’s top ministers decided to relax the blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip after facing international criticism for a raid against an aid flotilla trying to breach the embargo that left nine Turks dead.

There was a circle, and then another circle, and then another circle as the drummers sang around the drum, the dancers danced around the grassy arena, and the spectators watched in awe, as the beat of the drum echoed upward from Trophy Point overlooking the Hudson River on a sunny day.

As the African nation continues to expand and the need for energy grows, geothermal, wind and other forms of renewable energy just might fit the bill.

Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) yesterday released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS) in which the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 4.75 percent with an average 0.7 point for the week ending June 17, 2010, up from last week when it averaged 4.72 percent. Last year at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 5.38 percent.

Clearing forests in the Amazon helps mosquitoes thrive and can send malaria rates soaring, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

Worldwide average land surface temperature for May and March-May was the warmest on record while the global ocean surface temperatures for both May and March-May were second warmest on record, behind 1998.

The US Conference of Mayors adopted a resolution at its 78th Annual Meeting calling on the Federal government to accelerate its support for natural gas vehicles. The resolution calls for the following specific initiatives:

Sen. Jeff Merkley has positioned himself to play a potentially pivotal role on clean-energy legislation that Senate Democrats hope to consider this summer.

The caucus will meet privately today to consider what course to take to reduce the nation's dependence on fossil fuels, which environmentalists say is having a global impact on the climate.

Authorities arrested 485 people since March in the largest nationwide mortgage-fraud crackdown of its kind, the U.S. Justice Department said.

North Carolinians could be exposed to much higher concentrations of a notorious Teflon chemical than the rest of the country under a proposed state regulation that would allow unsafe levels of the contaminant in drinking water, scientists at Environmental Working Group (EWG) warn.

The area of the Gulf of Mexico closed to fishing has been expanded again by NOAA to capture portions of the oil slick moving beyond the area’s current northern boundary, off the Florida panhandle’s federal-state waterline. This boundary was moved to Panama City Beach.

BP's oil spill cuts two ways in terms of nuclear energy. On the one hand, it would tend to bode well for the growth of the non-fossil-fired energy. On the hand, it begs for a greater dialogue about nuclear safety.

Conservation practices employed on cropland in the Upper Mississippi River Basin are reducing sediment, nutrient and pesticide losses from farm fields, but producers need to better manage nutrients to keep them out of waterways, finds the first in a series of regional reports by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Contrary to what the Constitution says, the president does not run the executive branch of the federal government. It runs itself. Following Newton’s Laws of Motion, it is “a body in motion that tends to remain in motion in the same direction and at the same speed unless acted upon by an outside force.” The bureaucracy keeps doing what it is programmed to do unless someone intervenes.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s announcement that the BP oil well has been leaking up to 60,000 barrels per day is a wake up call to grow beyond oil says the Global Renewable Fuels Alliance (GRFA), which represents the major renewable fuel producers around the world.

...the Water Opportunities and Water Conservation Act would, if passed, encourage the creation and export of innovative clean water technology, promote water conservation, attract economic development and create jobs.

This May a neighborhood in the Northeast San Fernando Valley became a model of sustainability for Los Angeles. With a long term goal of providing enough clean water for future generations, a coalition of non-profit organizations and government agencies has transformed a residential street with frequent flooding problems into a street that cleans up water pollution...

Scientists are reporting a new technique for mapping and testing oil-contaminated soils. Traditionally, samples need to be collected from the field and returned to a lab for extensive chemical analysis, costing time and money when neither is readily available during a clean-up operation. The new method can take measurements in the field and accurately predict the total amount of petroleum contaminants in moist, unprepared soil samples.

“When it comes to global warming, time and money are of the essence and nuclear power will fail America on both accounts,” said Anna Aurilio, Director of the Washington, D.C. Office of Environment America. “With government dollars more precious than ever, nuclear power is a dirty and foolish investment that will set us back in the race against global warming.”

Solar activity is expected to be very low for the next 3 days (18-20 June).The geomagnetic field was quiet to unsettled with a few isolated periods of active conditions at mid latitudes. Solar wind speeds remain near 520 km/s. The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit was at high levels during the past 24 hours.

Many of the issues we face with renewable energy and clean tech in general are technological problems, but I would argue many more of them have to do with framing the issues and convincing people to change. Technology won't do it by itself, the adoption and change of behavior will be the hard part.

Soil - the outermost skin of our planet - is a living organ of interconnected tissue. When soil is damaged, the tissue loses connectivity and the intelligence of its ecosystem collapses. Soil in this state is in critical condition.

Three out of four Americans believe that the Earth has been gradually warming as the result of human activity and want the government to institute regulations to stop it, according to a new survey by researchers at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.

63% of retailers reported that they have a formalized energy management/sustainability program, with 45% indicating that sustainability is a "key component" of their overall business strategy Only 5% of retailers admitted their organization doesn't worry about energy management/sustainability...

...the breakthrough paves the way for the Swiss government to turn over the names and account details of as many as 4,450 U.S. clients of UBS suspected of using undeclared accounts to hide income and evade taxes.

Winter's snow drought has given way to a temporary flood of late spring runoff, forcing regional managers of the electrical grid to give away power, dial back generation at thermal plants and rapidly fill reservoirs to maintain acceptable conditions for migrating fish.

The Gulf oil spill that's so bedeviling President Obama has its roots back in the Clinton years.

In 1995, President Bill Clinton signed the Outer Continental Shelf Deepwater Royalty Relief Act, which exempted oil wells drilled deep in the Gulf from the normal royalty payments to the government.

Obama won election not as a status quo liberal, but as an ambitious reformer. Far from being content with incremental gains, he set his sights on major systemic change in health care, energy and environmental policy, taxation, financial regulation, education, and even immigration, all pursued as elements of a grand strategy to “remake America.” In other words, he longs to be another FDR,..

Water is vital for life and how it freezes is very important. For years water (ice) has been known to exist in 15 phases. Subjected to higher pressures and varying temperatures, ice can form in fifteen separate known phases. With care all these types can be recovered at ambient pressure.

Whether we're smart enough as a people to recognize that the most recent Gulf oil spill should be a wake-up call for providing real safety measures when drilling is yet to be determined.

Following the latest efforts to plug the gushing leak from BP's Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, and amid warnings that oil could continue to flow for another two months or more, perhaps it's a good time to step back a moment mentally and look at the bigger picture—the context of our human history of resource extraction—to see how current events reveal deeper trends that will have even greater and longer-lasting significance.

Supermarket food is at risk of being contaminated by a ‘highly toxic’ chemical found in the glue of packaging labels.
The chemical, which is in the same class of toxicity as mercury, asbestos and hydrochloric acid, can seep through and contaminate food, according to a study.

The inspection found that the farm was improperly storing large piles of uncovered chicken manure and evidence that pollutants, including nitrogen and phosphorus, were discharged into Turley Creek, a tributary of the North Fork of the Shenandoah River.

Working together, U.S. government and independent scientists estimate that the most likely flow rate of oil today is between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels per day. The improved estimate is based on more and better data that is now available and that helps increase the scientific confidence in the accuracy of the estimate.

As oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, a United States senator wants to increase penalties for environmental crimes....The bill would change current law, which says restitution for Clean Water Act violations is discretionary, the senator said.

The nation’s biggest landlord, the United States government, has set the rent it will charge developers who build solar power plants on federal land, and some prospective tenants are not happy.

...the industry has "significantly upgraded" groundwater monitoring and reporting programs, and is cleaning up leaks when they occur.

2009 was a tumultuous year for the voluntary carbon markets, according to a new report. Transactions dropped 26% compared to 2008 for an equivalent of 94 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions reductions.

Waste Management is capable of recycling many common materials through a couple of programs they have. All they need is for people to take advantage of them.

One of the things that's fascinating about traveling abroad are those sometimes subtle cultural differences that make me better understand being an American, for both good and bad.

“Central bank independence is about the ability to say no to demands for bond purchases when they are economically unjustified, no more, no less. Central banks maintain that ability to say no by delivering best possible economic results, not by minding their reputation for seeming independent.” He added that: “Getting unduly caught up in protecting the appearance of central bank independence is doubly mistaken:

Texas, United States At first glance, last year's 10 gigawatts of wind installations in the U.S. make it seem like the market is in good shape. But those numbers don't tell the real story of the difficulties the wind industry is facing.

Sit down. Get ready. Your life has begun to change. It will never be the same again. This gulf disaster is changing everything. Call your legislators. Tell them that they are now on notice. There are the constituents and there are planet killing corporations, ready to wipe out life on the planet for a profit. Those legislators have to choose whose side they are on. No more bullshit. No more lobbyists getting favors.

The assault on Iraq's top financial institution stoked fears that insurgents are taking advantage of political deadlock after inconclusive March 7 national elections to try to derail security gains as the U.S. prepares to withdraw its forces by the end of next year.

Mobs of rioters slaughtered Uzbeks and burned their homes and businesses in Kyrgyzstan's worst ethnic violence in decades, sending more than 75,000 members of the ethnic minority fleeing the country in attacks that appeared aimed at undermining the Central Asian nation's interim government.

The local effort could, according to some experts, lead the way in averting a worldwide catastrophe caused by climate change and a growing population ravenous for energy.

Forest advocacy groups from three continents are warning that bioenergy poses a threat to forests and forest-dependent peoples, and that IS plans for wood-based bioenergy will worsen a dangerous situation.

"While the UN climate talks still tend to discuss climate action as a burden, more and more people in more and more countries see it as a benefit, and taking on this view is what will allow negotiators to be successful in solving the big challenges."

Setting the stage for a showdown with BP executives at congressional hearings starting on Tuesday, two Democratic lawmakers said the British company chose faster and cheaper drilling options in the Gulf of Mexico that "increased the danger of a catastrophic well failure."

The US Congress will kick off another week of hearings on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on Tuesday when executives from five major oil companies take the hot seat to testify on the safety of their drilling and production operations.

In an update, BP said it has now spent some $1.6 billion as a result of the world's biggest accidental oil spill, up from $1.43 million on June 10.

While deeply saddened by the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, environmentalists are using the occasion to ensure that future energy projects get the scrutiny they deserve before such facilities are allowed to operate. And they will have a sympathetic ear both from federal and state regulators as well as the constituencies who are involved. Ironically, though, that strategy will likely cost them a favorable vote this year on climate change.

OK, you’re right, it 's impossible to actually beam “nothing” across a room. It is, however, possible to beam light across a room, sending information in the form of extremely short dips in that light. That’s what America’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been doing with its dark pulse laser.

More than a year ago, President Obama directed his science advisor, Dr. John Holdren, to develop recommendations that would guarantee scientific integrity throughout the federal government. Since that time, Dr. Holden's Office of Science and Technology Policy has been virtually silent on the issue.

Fatih Birol, the International Energy Agency’s chief economist, called on leaders of the Group of 20 Nations to fulfill their pledge to end fossil-fuel subsidies, a move he said will cut oil demand and greenhouse-gas emissions.

So far, the worst oil spill in American history hasn’t jump-started climate change legislation in a gridlocked, shell-shocked Senate, as many Democrats had hoped it would.

The resurgent U.S. ethanol industry will use an additional 250 million bushels of corn through the next 15 months, dramatically reducing the corn surplus despite record crops, said the government on Thursday.

Tests conducted by the FDA last year on 22 red lipsticks found lead, a neurotoxin, in every single lipstick sample studied.

On the surface, this doesn’t seem like a bad idea...there is evidence that consuming ‘hard’ drinking-water [that is, water high in minerals] may be associated with reduced risks for some diseases.”..Importantly, calcium also shouldn’t be used without vitamin D, omega–3 fatty acids, and especially vitamin K (in particular, vitamin K2). Without these essential co-factors, the calcium may end up in our blood vessels or our heart, where it causes harm, rather in than our bones, where it is needed.

FuelCell Energy, Inc a leading manufacturer of high efficiency ultra-clean power plants using renewable and other fuels for commercial, industrial, government, and utility customers today announced that Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has ordered two 1.4 Megawatt DFC1500 fuel cell power plants to install as utility-owned fuel cells on the campuses of California State University East Bay – Hayward Hills (CSU – East Bay) and San Francisco State University (SFSU).

Growing numbers of girls are reaching puberty before the age of 10...

Scientists believe the phenomenon could be linked to obesity or exposure to chemicals in the food chain, and is putting girls at greater long-term risk of breast cancer.

The BP oil disaster, hurricanes and wetlands loss threaten a net value of $330 billion to $1.3 trillion in natural system goods and services, according to the first study of the Mississippi River Delta as a capital asset.

An extract of green tea appears to have clinical activity with low toxicity in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients who used it in a phase II clinical trial, say researchers at Mayo Clinic.

The January 12th earthquakes in Haiti left the country's infrastructure in destruction and the people in devastation. The latest available statistics provided by the Haitian authorities indicate more than 222,500 people were killed, greater than 300,000 injured, and over 597,800 people were displaced from Port-au-Prince to other parts of the country.

In one of the first studies of its kind, energy researchers in Madison have uncovered a simple way that most consumers can save on their electric bills: pull the plug.

As he recently played the strategic board game “Battleship” with a child, musician Drew Nelson could not help thinking about the ongoing battle to defend sacred Eagle Rock in northern Michigan that has pitted American Indian tribes and others against an international mining company.

If milk does the heart good, it might do the heart better if it comes from dairy cows grazed on grass instead of on feedlots, according to a new study.

Kevin Costner, actor, musician and environmentalist is ready to help clean up the Gulf oil spill with a centrifuge device that is already in the Gulf waters, ready for action.

As we approach the upcoming autumn milestone of 10 gigawatts of solar installed in 2010, Greentech Media asks a few solar luminaries to reflect on the event.

The winds sweeping across the Northern Plains could soon help farmers fertilize their crops of corn, wheat and sorghum.

The widespread use of glyphosate is causing negative impacts on soil and plants as well as possibly animal and human health. These are key findings of Don Huber, emeritus professor of plant pathology, Purdue University.

To provide the latest information about where the BP oil spill is and where it is headed, shipping lane closures, fishery closures where responders are taking action, and many other types of information, federal agencies have created a new website with an interactive map.

"We want to make sure that money is escrowed for the legitimate claims," White House adviser David Axelrod told NBC's "Meet the Press," adding that the money would be independently administered to ensure it is disbursed in a timely fashion.

A Canadian researcher is hoping that within ten years, people will be able to regrow tendons, spinal cords or heart valves lost to injury or disease.

Developers of small hydropower projects are seeking big changes in the way their projects are permitted and licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

A group of students continue their journey of retracing the Trail of Tears on bicycle. This year's Remember the Removal Ride will be a more than 900-mile bike ride will take 23 days, with each day traveling from 40 to 70 miles per day. The riders will stop daily to learn about things that happened along the Trail of Tears.

Biologist Orah Zamora spends her days walking around wind turbines in search of dead birds and bats. Most of her surveys turn up nothing, but every once in a while she finds a carcass that may have been felled by a whirring blade.

A Senate proposal setting up a cap-and-trade program to curtail greenhouse gas emissions likely will be offered on the floor later this summer as an amendment to a smaller, energy-only approach, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said today.

Fifty-one votes would have been needed in favor of the plan to advance it toward a final vote.

We fear political commitments will make their lives more insecure. Especially when they're young, it may be all we can do just to go to work, come home, pay attention to their needs, and catch a few scarce hours of sleep. Yet when we do find ways to get engaged, our children can give us powerful reasons to act.

SRP has announced a request for proposals (RFP) for electricity generated from utility-scale, ground-based solar photovoltaic power plants, preferably located somewhere in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.

Right now the spots are mostly gone for about 2 years which is highly unusual and may portend dramatic solar events to come which will affect the whole earth.

The solar sunspot cycle has a great influence on space weather, and is a significant influence on the Earth's climate due to its effect on overall luminosity. Sunspot minima tend to be correlated with colder temperatures, and longer than average solar cycles tend to be correlated with hotter temperatures.

A growing number of Americans want the United States to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as the largest oil spill in U.S. history helps boost interest in petroleum alternatives, a poll by two universities found on Tuesday.

The chickens you buy at the grocery store are given feed with arsenic added to make them gain weight faster. Yes, arsenic—the deadly poison and carcinogen.

Proponents of a “21st century constitution” or “living constitution” aim to transform our nation’s supreme law beyond recognition—and with a minimum of public attention and debate.

On Thursday, the Flow Rate Technical Group released its new estimate of 25,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil a day based on information gathered last week, before BP installed a new capture device. Some scientists have warned that the flow rate sharply increased after BP cut the pipe, known as the riser, to install the new device last week. The current estimates from the government panel suggest that an amount equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could be flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every eight to ten days.

After 25 years in the HR profession, I have discovered that just when you think you've "got it", "it" changes. This has been the case in Human Resources for the past 50 years. During this time, legislation has included FLSA, Equal Pay Act, Title 7, ADEA, OSHA, ERISA, COBRA, IRCA, HIPPA, FCRA, FMLA, ADA, and a host of permutations related to these laws.

Did you know what each acronym stood for, how it originated and the consequences of each? The focus of this article is not to further study what these acronyms mean. Rather, it is to unravel the mysteries of Human Resources.

A growing number of studies are finding hundreds of toxic chemicals in mothers’ and, subsequently, their babies’ bodies when they are born. While there is no science yet that demonstrates conclusive cause and effect between this mix of toxic chemicals children are born with and particular health problems, a range of studies are finding associations between elevated levels of chemicals in a baby’s body and their development. Not definitive cause and effect, but association.

Turkey and South Korea Tuesday signed an agreement to cooperate on the possible construction of a $10 billion nuclear power plant at Sinop on Turkey's Black Sea coast, a spokesman for Turkey's energy ministry said.

The Tennessee Valley Authority said Monday it will pay the $11.5 million in civil penalties assessed by the state Department of Environment and Conservation for violations stemming from the massive coal ash spill at the Kingston coal-fired plant in December 2008.

The annual meeting of U.S. mayors today unanimously passed a resolution calling for stepped up federal efforts to access, mitigate and recover from the environmental and economic damage of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The U.S. Senate was set on Thursday to vote on a bill blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating pollution blamed for global warming, in a test of lawmakers' resolve for tackling broader climate legislation this year.

As oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico and just days before a major U.S. Senate vote on legislation that would block new rules requiring cars to use less oil, a new analysis finds that California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania would increase their oil consumption the most under the Senate bill – by as much as 62 million gallons in California alone in 2016.

A coal-fired boiler at the University of Missouri´s main campus is being replaced with a biomass boiler.

The kingdom has been focusing increasingly on oil markets in Asia, which is expected to account for the bulk of future oil demand.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

When the ocean swallowed up their homes, it also divided the people of this sleepy Ivorian fishing village -- half of them moved inland, the other half stayed to brave the waves.

Biodiversity is starting to be become another buzz word like green products and carbon footprints. Biodiversity is the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem or on the entire Earth. Biodiversity is often used as a measure of the health of biological systems.

In 2008, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm proclaimed her state was ready to be the Silicon Valley of clean energy...

Granholm is leaving office because of term limits, and several of her potential successors are vowing to jump-start new coal plants and take the state in the opposite direction on renewable energy and climate change.

Xcel Energy announced Friday it will cut its solar development plans by at least half, if not more, because of uncertainties over the in-service date for a new transmission line out of the San Luis Valley.

Two years ago we reported that London’s iconic black cabs would be getting a green makeover with a fleet to be fitted out with zero local emissions hydrogen fuel cell power systems in time for the Olympics in 2012. Now the first prototype fuel cell black cab has been unveiled. It is powered by hydrogen fuel system hybridized with lithium polymer batteries that allow the vehicle to operate for a full day without the need for refueling.

When it becomes operational in 2012, the plant, dubbed Shams 1, will feature some 6,300,000 square-feet of solar parabolic collectors, cover 741 acres of desert and will produce enough electricity to power 62,000 households.

Investments in the alternative energy market saw a 59% increase in deal value last year, reporting US$678.1 billion in 2009, compared to US$425.5 billion in 2008.

Despite some fanatical proclamations which sprout every year, there is quality tropical research and statistical predictions emanating from a variety of legitimate scientific entities. Over the past decade, the most popular and widely heralded of these "Hurricane Forecasts", has come out of Colorado State University [CSU],..

BP's nightmare is of its own making. But it didn't have to be that way. The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico underscores the dilemma of not actually backing up an advertising slogan with the appropriate actions.

Asked what caused her woes, the 57-year-old resident of Apopka, Florida, doesn't hesitate: for nearly a decade as a farm laborer on the shores of Lake Apopka in the 1970s and 1980s, she was routinely exposed to agricultural chemicals.

With a Richmond BP station as a backdrop, a dozen environmental activists yesterday urged Virginia's U.S. senators to vote against a legislative amendment that they say amounts to a bailout for big oil.

Carbon dioxide isn't the problem, it's the answer.

So says Leighton Steward, a retired oil industry geologist who was invited to speak to the public on the Montana State University Billings campus Wednesday night.

Iraqis are calling on their incoming government to devote more energy to resolving the country's chronic water problems, with some experts stating that water will be more important than oil in the long-term development of the country.

The Fed's Ben Bernanke said Wednesday the US economy will grow this year but not fast enough to make big inroads in the unemployment rate. He signaled that interest rates are likely to remain low.

Palm oil grown on recently deforested land is unlikely to be acceptable for use in European biodiesel, a draft report from the European Commission shows.

The process involves going in through the patient’s groin, and threading a tiny catheter into a blood vessel. That catheter goes up to the neck, at which point an even smaller catheter emerges from it and goes into the brain, whereupon it vacuums out the blood clot.

As opponents of a massive wind energy factory in Nantucket Sound watch the impact of energy giant BP’s oil blowout on the ocean and delicate ecosystems of the Louisiana coast, they are drawing parallels between the energy projects and warning that another environmental disaster is likely to happen in the waters off Cape Cod.

Michael Graetzel's dye-sensitized solar cells, known as "Graetzel cells," could be a significant contributor to the future energy technologies due to their excellent price-performance ratio, the Helsinki-based Millennium Prize Foundation said.

"Graetzel cells are likely to have an important role in low-cost, large-scale solutions for renewable energy," the foundation said.

The shells of young oysters in Chesapeake Bay are not getting as thick as they've been in the past, and higher acidity levels seem to be to blame.

Worldwide the energy consumption for air-conditioning is rising rapidly and the market potential for solar thermal cooling is very large indeed.

Since clean diesel cars were introduced to the U.S. market just over a year ago, they have been rising in popularity among American consumers.

A group of 24 trade associations representing a broad range of employers that provide jobs to millions of Americans is urging U.S. senators to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from going around Congress to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

"For the first time, there is a case where the concentrating PV panels themselves are cheap enough to market [thereby] making up the cost and complexity of the tracking systems."

A funding battle is brewing in Europe over a 16-billion-euro ($21.5 billion) experiment to crack the puzzle of commercializing nuclear fusion -- the process that powers the sun.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today that Department is providing online access to schematics, pressure tests, diagnostic results and other data about the malfunctioning blowout preventer.

By now most know about the oil gushing out in the Gulf of Mexico. Certainly it is floating on the surface but what is the effect underwater? One way is to measure the relative concentrations of PAHs (Polycyclic hydrocarbons)

Pharmaceuticals turning up in streams and rivers have made headlines in recent years. Now for the first time in the U.S., researchers have shown that such drugs may come directly from plants that manufacture them.

The International Energy Agency's chief economist is calling on leaders of the Group of 20 Nations to fulfill their pledge to end fossil-fuel subsidies, a move he says will cut oil demand and greenhouse-gas emissions.

Ah, the cool, refreshing feel of air conditioning on a sweltering summer day.

Ugh, the discomfort when those energy bills in July, August and September come due — $200, $400, $600 or more.

Feel miserable, or dig deep into your wallet — not much of a choice for the 250 million Americans who live in climates where heat, humidity or both are a Catch-22 for three to 12 months a year.

A soothing solution may be on its way, thanks to a melding of technologies in filters, coolers and drying agents.

A Chinese farmer has declared war on property developers who want his land, building a cannon out of a wheelbarrow and pipes and firing rockets at would-be eviction teams, state media said on Tuesday.

The current drilling moratorium on wells in the US Gulf of Mexico in more than 500 feet of water "is not supported by law and is likely to constitute a repudiation of all leases located in 500 feet of water and deeper," a former attorney with the Minerals Management Service told a Senate panel Tuesday.

While an out-of-control gusher deep in the Gulf of Mexico fouls beaches and chokes marshland habitat, another threat could be growing below the oil-slicked surface.

The nation's worst oil spill could worsen and expand the oxygen-starved region of the Gulf labeled "the dead zone" for its inhospitability to marine life,..

Much of the agriculture practiced in the United States today is industrial-style agriculture. That is, farms are often very large, highly specialized, and run like factories with large inputs of fossil fuels, pesticides and other chemicals, and synthetic fertilizers derived from oil. This industrial agriculture is sometimes considered a great success. But is it?

Between March 2009 and March 2010, India added 2.33GW of grid-connected renewable power capacity, more than double the amount installed in the previous year. It now has about 16.8GW of renewable energy capacity, contributing approximately 7% of the total capacity in the country.

You can’t not like an invention called the Baby Bubbler. Even if it were called the Pontiac Aztek, you’d still have to like it, as it’s doubtless going to save many young lives.

Iran Sent Angry Note to the U.S. Through the Swiss Embassy. Two videos of Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri tell different stories.

Iran said Thursday it will review relations with the U.N. nuclear watchdog a day after the U.N. Security Council approved a fourth round of sanctions against Tehran over its disputed nuclear program.

Iran's president dismissed the sanctions as "annoying flies" as useless as "used tissues."

By setting up our team we embraced a long-standing tradition of Earth stewardship, a tradition found at some level in all world religions. Our green team and those at similar congregations are not modern or revolutionary. Indeed, they are the fulfillment of ancient mandates.

All of the Earth's religions speak of an ethical responsibility to care for the natural world.

Australia's wheat crop is expected to flourish and coffee cherries in Vietnam may receive much-needed rains after a brief yet severe dry spell as the La Nina weather phenomenon develops.

When the problem was discovered on Tuesday, the valve was leaking at a rate of more than one gallon per minute. The waste was running into a floor drain and being pumped back into the system.

On March 10, 2010, seventy-six organizations representing millions of Americans sent a letter to the USDA asking for greater protection against cows with bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease entering the US from Canada.

With BP finally starting to gain in the battle with its runaway Macondo well, oil industry focus began turning June 7 to the future regulatory look for a post-Macondo Gulf of Mexico -- including a suggestion that operators might be required to drill relief wells as a precautionary addition to deepwater exploration projects.

There is no room for additional oil on world markets, OPEC said this week, warning that supply growth has "more than overwhelmed" growth in demand.

Increased melting of glaciers and snow in the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau threatens the food security of millions of people in Asia, a study shows, with Pakistan likely to be among the nations hardest hit.

Latin America's biggest biodigester will be built in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila to produce electricity and fuel ethanol, as part of a nationwide bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Mexican broadcasters reported Wednesday.

The Minerals Management Service on June 8 issued tough new safety guidelines for offshore drilling, a key step that will allow the eventual resumption of shallow-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico....

Shallow-water permits have been frozen and in some cases yanked over the past few weeks while MMS officials worked on the set of new safety and inspection requirements.

It gets its name, however, from the fact that it flushes very quietly. More importantly, it could also be considered stealthy because conventional radar will barely be able to detect the amount of water it uses - at just 0.8 gallons per flush, it is touted as the world’s most efficient toilet.

An NRC investigation determined that a contract employee brought an illegal substance into the plant's protected area and allegedly used it while on the site. The NRC's Jan. 27 letter informed Duke Energy the case warranted two apparent violations of federal regulations.

The federal government is moving too slowly to implement biomass energy programs created in the 2008 farm bill, some lawmakers say.

But the delay is giving Rep. William L. Owens, D-Plattsburgh, more time to plead the case of companies that could turn Northern New York wood into fuel -- but have been shut out of the program so far.

...a University of Pittsburgh engineering professor has developed a technique that looks very promising. His filter for separating oil from water not only cleans the water, but also allows the oil to be recovered and stored for the use BP originally intended and the filter to be reused.

Getting consumers to learn how electricity is priced is a good thing. That could lead to efficiency and conservation, resulting in lower rates. That's understood. But do those benefits outweigh the costs and will investors step up?

British researchers studied nearly 12,000 adults in Scotland and found those with poor oral hygiene had a 70 percent extra risk of heart disease compared with those who brushed twice a day and who were less likely to have unhealthy gums.

Solar activity is expected to be very low to low with a chance for a C-class event. The geomagnetic field is
forecast to be mostly quiet with a chance for an isolated period of unsettled conditions during the next 3 days (10-12 June).

John Madrid, a disabled Pueblo man, summed up the fundamental frustration of most of the witnesses.

"I didn't get a cost-of-living (increase) in my pension this year because of the economic situation," Madrid told Gomez. "I don't see how a town like Pueblo will be able to absorb the cost of building this plant."

U.S. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack recently declared a "silent" crisis in rural America. Silent? The American farmers testifying at the joint antitrust listening sessions held by the USDA and Department of Justice (DoJ) were loud enough. If their denunciation of the monopolies controlling our food system--and government inaction on antitrust abuse--is silence, it is only because their voices fell on deaf ears.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and the governors of 10 East Coast states today signed a Memorandum of Understanding that formally establishes an Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy Consortium to promote the efficient, orderly, and responsible development of wind resources on the Outer Continental Shelf.

The U.S. market for small wind energy systems is prospering, expanding 15% in 2009 and accounting for about half of the units sold in the entire world, the American Wind Energy Association said today, highlighting findings from its annual Small Wind Turbine market study.

A resolution aims to stop the EPA's plan to start regulating greenhouse gases from the largest smokestack sources next year. The vote on it could signal the chances for an energy-climate bill.

Last week, Texas-based Skyonic Corporation was granted a U.S. patent on its SkyMine technology, which is said to remove CO2 from smoke stack emissions by mineralizing it into sodium bicarbonate. That bicarbonate (also known as baking soda) can then be sold for use in glass manufacturing, algae biofuel production, and other areas.

With 57,500 barrels of oil diverted from BP's runaway Macondo exploration well and collection hitting 15,000 b/d, heavyweight lightering help was headed to the Gulf of Mexico June 9 in the form of BP's Loch Rannoch shuttle tanker dispatched from the North Sea and set for arrival next week.

The future of Austin's northeast power plant is under scrutiny as talk of selling off its approximately 30,000-ton coal stockpile moves forward.

Sustainable agriculture can provide high food, feed, or energy crop yields without destroying the environment or undermining current productivity. Farmers who take a sustainable approach substitute knowledge for pesticides and fertilizers.

Using an unusual parliamentary maneuver, the Tennessee Senate just approved a bill that would instruct the state attorney general to sue the federal government if it penalizes any person for failing to buy health insurance.

A study by Australian scientists has resulted in the development of a test for blood type that can be performed using antibody impregnated paper manufacturable for a few cents per test, which is significantly cheaper than existing tests of a similar nature.

The BP Disaster Marks the End of the Age of Arrogance About the Environment ... Can We Change?
This spill will mark the time we started to learn about ecocide; a turning point in our realization that our industrial, carbon-dependent way of life cannot last.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking action to end all uses of the insecticide endosulfan in the United States. Endosulfan, which is used on vegetables, fruits, and cotton, can pose unacceptable neurological and reproductive risks to farm workers and wildlife and can persist in the environment.

The question of whether to allow more production in light of the BP oil disaster is one that is likely to haunt the oil and gas sectors for a long time. It's tantamount to how the accident at Three Mile Island has derailed nuclear development for three decades.

Last Friday’s shocking news—the revelation of hidden financial ties and influence-peddling behind the World Health Organization’s declaration of a worldwide H1N1 pandemic—is only one of our articles this week on the controversial issue of immunization.

We all knew that the renewable energy industry would pounce on this disaster and make all kinds of claims about how this highlights, once again, why the world must transition to renewables. This week the commentaries really started to flood in and I read all — well, most — of them. I’d like to highlight the ones that have stuck with me.

Student researchers at Northeastern University have designed an apparatus to convert plastic waste into clean energy while minimizing the release of harmful emissions.

Responding to moves by U.S. officials to grab more BP cash for the cleanup, British ministers heeded calls to defend the UK's biggest payer of share dividends and stand up to perceived Britain-bashing by President Barack Obama.

The Fed’s Beige Book, prepared with data collected on or before May 28, indicated that economic activity improved across all 12 Federal Reserve districts, although the pace of growth was generally seen as “modest.”

The US Congress has passed a bill allowing the movement of monies from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund's principal fund to the emergency fund, to enable the continuation of ongoing operations in response to the Macondo well blowout, the Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Information Center said in a statement early Friday.

In May, a total of 322,920 properties received a foreclosure filing. That figure equates to one in every 400 U.S. housing units, and is less than 1 percent higher than the number of filings tracked a year ago...

“Lenders appear to be ramping up the pace of completing those forestalled foreclosures even while the inflow of delinquencies into the foreclosure process has slowed,”

As much as 40,000-plus barrels of oil per day were pouring from BP's ruptured well into the Gulf of Mexico before the latest containment device was fitted, a US official said Thursday, more than doubling the previous government estimate.

"We expect this framework will help advance the promise of green jobs being key to our future. The nation cannot continue to fall behind other countries on clean energy manufacturing. America must be a global leader and establish new manufacturing jobs. If we do not act quickly on this opportunity through federal leadership and industry commitment, we will have done a disservice to our citizens.

Tales of the Elwha River’s legendary 100-pound chinook salmon fueled the debate over tearing down the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams.

But when the 108-foot Elwha Dam and the 210-foot Glines Canyon Dam are no more, will the mystical big fish return, riding the same genetic makeup that pushed them to supposedly grow to such prodigious proportions so long ago?

United Parcel Service this week is rolling out 200 new hybrid gas-electric delivery trucks in eight U.S. cities. Over the course of a year, the 200 new hybrid trucks are expected to reduce fuel consumption by roughly 176,000 gallons and cutting CO2 gases by nearly 1,800 metric tons.

The Texas air quality war -- a conflict pitting environmental health against money -- now is fully engaged because of a rare crosscurrent of political timing.

The Namibian solar water heating industry is engaged in a battle of solar technologies, as a relatively new technology in the local market, the evacuated-tube technology, makes inroads into a market which has been dominated by flat-plate solar collectors for the past 20 years.

Petroleum-based products such as fuels and plastics are vilified for their economic and environmental drawbacks. Businesses, scientists and governments are urgently seeking a reliable supply of affordable fuels and industrial materials, and a reduction in the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere, and are looking to bio-based products to deliver them.

Using the government's highest estimate of 19,000 barrels (800,000 gallons/3 million liters) per day spewing from the blown-out Macondo well, the 6,000 barrels captured on Friday would represent nearly a third.

On June 5, a total of 10,500 barrels of oil were collected and 22,000 Mcf of natural gas flared, it added.

Despite their differences on Arizona's immigration law, which sparked this meeting, the pair reportedly had a cordial discussion. Brewer has tried to impress upon Obama, who had not read Arizona's law before criticizing it, the seriousness of illegal immigration, and the threat it poses to law enforcement officers.

"A clean energy economy is really a win-win for South Dakota," McGovern said. "It will create jobs, reduce dependency on foreign oil and really reduce dependency on any oil in the long run."

The problem is what to do about pharmaceuticals and carcinogens leeching into the nation's water after being flushed down the drain. These dangerous materials have to go somewhere and scientists say they are affecting the well being of humans and wildlife. Everyday pain relievers, even birth control pills, are causing mutations in frogs and are dangerous to other species, they say.

Testimony today by a mercury watchdog group charges that the American Dental Association has provided misleading information that dentists are voluntarily controlling their mercury pollution and that the toxic metal doesn't get taken up in fish that people eat. The Mercury Policy Project will provide evidence to the contrary...

Get ready. Your electric bill is about to increase.

And it has nothing to do with the El Paso Electric Co.

Blame this one on Mother Nature.

The legislation would reauthorize and increase funding for the drinking water state revolving fund (SRF) under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The drinking water SRF provides an important source of funding for public water systems, which are projected to face a significant increase in investment needs as existing infrastructure ages.

The last thing BP wanted was images of the undersea oil plume in the Gulf shown to the world. Yet the live ‘spillcam’ of the Deepwater Horizon geyser may have tempered ill-will against BP.

In May, in a long-stalled response to concerns raised by the National Academies of Sciences in 2006, EPA reaffirmed its position that dioxin causes cancer and other negative health effects even at extremely low levels of exposure and stated that most Americans are being exposed to unsafe levels of the chemical through the foods that they eat

According to information from the Energy Information Administration - March 2010 ethanol production averaged more than 847-thousand barrels per day. That is an increase of 207-thousand barrels over March 2009 and a record pace.

First Nations women are on a month-long, 300-mile march to Ottawa to protest the discrimination against women in Canada’s 1876 Indian Act. Canada’s parliament has proposed an amendment – Bill C-3 – to the Indian Act ...

The market for solar modules, a key element in solar power systems, is so strong that industry leader First Solar will not be able to meet demand this year, a senior executive was quoted as saying on Saturday.

If $30 million worth of fish sounds like a lot for northwest Ohio's economy to sacrifice each year for electricity generated by Oregon's Bay Shore power plant, consider this: The real impact might be a lot greater.

Of all the assaults humanity is inflicting on the earth, nitrogen pollution is one of the most devastating. In more than 400 coastal areas worldwide, agricultural runoff is sapping oxygen from large swaths of oceans, killing nearly all marine life. In the Midwest, much of the synthetic fertilizer used in farming washes into the Mississippi River and out to the Gulf of Mexico where every year it creates a "dead zone" up to 8,000 square miles.

Airlines are expected to post a global profit of $2.5 billion this year, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said Monday in a major reversal of the $2.8 billion loss for 2010 it forecast in March.

Hawaiians like to think of themselves as early adopters -- especially when it comes to electricity.

The first car imported to Hawaii in 1899 was an electric vehicle.

A local physician is building a house in Wisconsin without a furnace -- it won't need one.

“It’s a gusher of creative tactics,” announced Leslie C. Norins, MD, PhD, president of Principal Investigators Association, upon seeing more than 250 novel ideas pour in from scientist-readers of the group’s weekly ezine P.I. e-Alert.

A huge fireball has been spotted on Jupiter in yet another collision from space caught on camera and video by amateur astronomers.

The new Jupiter crash occurred on June 3 at 20:31 UT (4:31 p.m. Eastern Time) and was spotted by skywatcher Anthony Wesley in Australia and fellow amateur astronomer Christopher Go in the Philippines.

A twenty-five year wait for first convictions relating to the gas leak at Bhopal chemical plant in India ends, but the contamination of the local environment and population continues

An Indian court has convicted seven people for their part in one of the world's worst industrial disasters - the gas leak at the US-owned Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Central India in 1984.

Volkswagen and other German car makers are investing heavily in electric vehicles and bringing more green autos to dealerships near you soon, industry experts said Thursday.

"It's one of the mega trends," said Karsten Schmidt, chief executive of the U.S. office of global engineering design company Bertrandt AG, about the increasingly key role of electric cars in the auto industry.

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards are ready to provide a military escort to cargo ships trying to break Israel's blockade of Gaza, a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday.

Italy signed an agreement with France marking the return of nuclear power to Italy after a referendum rejected it in 1986, official documents show

Specifically, Sen. Murkowski's resolution would overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific finding that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that endangers the public's health and welfare. The resolution would have the effect of repealing the Obama administration's landmark clean vehicle standards, which were based on that finding, and would also block requirements that the largest power plants and factories use modern technology and cleaner energy to cut their global warming pollution.

Outflow from two wastewater treatment plants in New York that receive more than 20 percent of their wastewater from pharmaceutical facilities had concentrations of pharmaceuticals that were 10 to 1000 times higher than outflows from 24 plants nationwide that do not receive wastewater from pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Nearly 70 percent of Americans have never heard the phrase "smart grid," but once they learn more, they come to expect it to carry significant benefits and save them money.

A new ethanol refinery in central Virginia, on schedule to begin production this summer, could create a large new market for winter barley — providing farmers with new economic opportunity and incentive to grow a winter crop that fits nicely in the region’s cropping systems.

There is new hope that million of poor Indians can gain access to an energy efficient light source powered by the sun, throw away billions of polluting kerosene lanterns -and earn the nation money while doing so.

At a speech delivered at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh yesterday, President Obama emphasized the importance of transitioning our economy toward clean energy. Obama discussed why pricing carbon pollution is critical to building a clean energy economy:

An oil well located about 50 miles south of Fort Worth, Texas, exploded on Monday afternoon, according to local media reports.

Like the refrain from the Grateful Dead song, the only thing opposing lawyers could agree on is that the 23-year battle over Yucca Mountain has been "a long, strange trip."

Greenpeace report argues rollout of existing renewable energy policies will allow world to decouple economic growth and carbon emissions

Solar Activity Forecast: Solar activity is expected to be very low with a slight chance for a C-class event over the next 3 days (8-10 June). The geomagnetic field was mostly quiet over the past 24 hours with
the exception of an isolated period of unsettled conditions between 06/21Z and 07/00Z. The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at geosynchronous orbit was at high levels during the past 24 hours.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called on the world's leading economic powers on Saturday to consider creating a fund to insure against large-scale environmental disasters like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

"Perhaps we should consider setting up a global fund for insuring or re-insuring against these sorts of (environmental) risks," the president wrote in his official Kremlin blog.

The Senate will vote June 10 on a resolution that would undo U.S. EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said yesterday.

Kuwait's potential to benefit from the use of alternative energy was the subject of a workshop held at the Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) on Thursday....He pointed out that the ministry is interested in alternative energy and that it considers solar energy a promising source of energy in the future.

Zimbabwe has rejected genetically modified maize as food aid for its hungry population after raising health and environmental concerns.

About 2.2 million Zimbabweans - almost 16 per cent of the national population - need emergency food aid because low seasonal rains resulted in widespread crop failure,..

Families from Pakistan to Argentina to Congo are being battered by surging food prices that are dragging more people into poverty, fueling political tensions and forcing some to give up eating meat, fruit and even tomatoes.

While the Deepwater Horizon oil gusher continues to mire the Gulf of Mexico, another threat could be growing below the oil slicked surface. This is the "Dead Zone". Currently the most well known dead zone is about 8,500 square miles in size and lies in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi River dumps high nutrient runoff from its vast drainage basin, which includes the heart of the U.S. agriculture business from the Midwest. This is equivalent to a dead zone the size of New Jersey.

“We participated in good faith in the Forest Service’s collaborative process and we were assured that our sacred areas would be protected and our cultural values respected,” said Leaf Hillman, the tribe’s natural resources director. “It’s now obvious that those were hollow promises.”

Energy giant BP Plc seeks to double the amount of oil it captures from its ruptured Gulf of Mexico well, while the U.S. Gulf Coast will be struggling with the environmental mess from the huge spill for years, the Coast Guard said on Monday.

Plainly, our addiction to oil and consumption in general threatens to destroy regional and global ecosystems – the water, air, land and oceans –upon which Americans, humanity and all species depend upon for habitat and life.

A West Virginia coal miner has filed a federal whistleblower lawsuit saying he was fired by Massey Energy after he described unsafe conditions inside the Upper Big Branch coal mine in the days following an explosion that killed 29 men.

The Upper Delaware River, the drinking water source for 17 million people across New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania is at risk from shale fracking for natural gas, a process that poisons groundwater and creates toxic pollution. This threat landed the Upper Delaware in the number one spot in America's Most Endangered Rivers: 2010 edition.

Ultra-deepwater production has played a crucial part in stemming the overall decline in US offshore crude production, and the six-month extension of the Gulf of Mexico drilling ban announced last week by President Obama will have a major impact on future output, analysts believe.

The US Department of Energy is proposing keeping the millions of pages of documents relevant to its license application for a Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository for 100 years, attorney Michael Shebelskie told a US Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing board Friday.

In its first major climate report to the United Nations in four years, the United States reported Tuesday that its projected climate-warming greenhouse gases will grow by 4 percent through 2020.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) constructed a detailed computer model which outlines the possible trajectory of oil from the moment of the Deepwater Horizon rig sinking to late August. The model is not meant to be a forecast, but merely a possible scenario for the oil dispersal.

In a legal settlement that could affect the entire U.S. meat industry, the Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to identify and investigate thousands of factory farms that have been avoiding government regulation for water pollution with animal waste.

First of all, please understand that I do not recommend drinking pasteurized milk of any kind -- ever. Because once milk has been pasteurized it's more or less "dead," and offers little in terms of real nutritional value to anyone, whether you show signs of intolerance to the milk or not.

Parties involved in the May 2008 lawsuit filed by a Blair County doctor and his wife would not comment on the case nor discuss terms of the settlement.

World energy consumption will increase 49% in the next 25 years, driven by rapidly developing countries such as China and India, the Energy Information Administration said the week ended May 28.

Business owners around Yuma are finding that going solar makes "dollars and cents" for them.

And in the process they not only are benefitting their business, but helping the environment, too.

Brazilian farmers are setting more fires in parts of the Amazon where deforestation has slowed, according to a study on Thursday that shows weaknesses in a U.N. plan for slowing climate change.

Independent Anadarko Petroleum said late Thursday it expects to incur estimated total net costs of around $30 million-$40 million from the force majeure provisions it has invoked on three US Gulf of Mexico deepwater drilling rigs it had contracted.

The Gulf oil spill has triggered a crisis of confidence, shaking Americans' views about BP, the oil industry, technology and President Barack Obama and slowing a planned expansion of domestic offshore oil drilling.

Are the worst spill in U.S. history and images of dead birds and toxic syrup lapping at Gulf shores shocking enough to be a tipping point for energy policy and consumer behavior, however?

BP made promising strides in its latest bid to capture some of the oil spewing from its ruptured deep-sea well in the Gulf of Mexico, while President Barack Obama called off an overseas trip and prepared for another visit on Friday to the spill-stricken U.S. Gulf Coast.

Grant Thornton LLP’s Business Optimism Index, a quarterly survey of U.S. business leaders, increased significantly to 67.6 in May from 58.8 in February. Business leaders are becoming much more optimistic, with 63 percent expecting the U.S. economy to improve in the next six months, up from 43 percent in February.

California would be the first state to ban plastic and most paper bags from grocery, convenience and other stores under a proposal that appears headed for a major legislative victory this week.

The blowout of the BP-operated Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico last month has raised countless questions about the future of offshore drilling, regulation, safety and just how much built-in system redundancy should be required on already highly-functional equipment.

Researchers at Southeast University in Nanjing, China have created a device that traps and absorbs electromagnetic waves coming from all directions, spiraling them inwards without any reflections, essentially creating an electromagnetic black hole.

El Niño dissipated during May 2010 as positive surface temperature (SST) anomalies decreased rapidly across the equatorial Pacific Ocean and negative SST anomalies emerged across the eastern half of the Pacific

In December, the EPA declared that human activity has increased atmospheric greenhouse gases, posing a threat to humans that justifies federal imposition of caps on emissions from cars and other sources. This month, Mr. Cuccinelli asked the EPA to reconsider.

This was a key federal case argued for ANH-USA and other plaintiffs by Jonathan Emord and the Emord law firm. It was a remarkable seventh victory for Emord over the FDA in the area of allowable health claims for food or supplements.

Measurements made last year with the balloons in Kuwait and off the west coast of Africa showed clearly that desert dust could become strongly electrified aloft. Charging modifies particle behaviour, such as how effectively particles grow and are removed by rain.

John Alder's 1991 Suzuki GSX 600 Katana motorcycle barely made a sound as it pulled out of his driveway Monday. That's because the Catonsville man converted it to run on electricity.

The rule, which was signed late Wednesday night, is designed to protect people for the first time against short-term exposures to SO2 emissions from coal-burning power plants and other industrial sources. The National Ambient Air Quality Standards first set rules for SO2 emissions in 1971.

Mark Cool is an air traffic controller whose job requires clear thinking and plenty of confidence.

But ever since March, when the town of Falmouth's 1.65-megawatt wind turbine started spinning less than 1,200 feet from his home, the whirring, banging and clanking has meant sleepless nights and frayed nerves for Cool.

Florida Power & Light Co.'s newest solar-energy plant will have enough mirrors to cover 80 football fields. But those mirrors will focus sunlight onto surfaces that add up to slightly less than the area of a single football field.

That concentration of solar power will generate temperatures of more than 700 degrees -- hot enough to make electricity for 11,000 homes.

Ford Motor Co., working to make a quarter of its vehicles run at least partly on electricity, plans to invest $135 million and add 220 jobs at three Michigan facilities to help it introduce five such models by 2012.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has fined J P Morgan Securities Ltd (JPMSL) £33.32 million for failing to protect client money by segregating it appropriately.

Some commentators are arguing that the investment performance of gold mining stocks vs. general stock during the early 1930s will repeat in the early 2010s – i.e., gold will outperform stocks in general.

Current methodologies offer a multistage approach to reducing waterborne pathogens and therefore hospital-acquired illnesses from contaminated water.

Catastrophic environmental disasters, due to their massive and disruptive impact on life, the ecosystem, and economic livelihoods, can become watershed moments. The Minamata mercury pollution disaster in Japan and the Three Mile Island nuclear mishap in the U.S. are two iconic examples of environmental accidents which served as turning points for political, technological, and social change.

President Barack Obama reaffirmed Wednesday his commitment to containing and cleaning up the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and pledged to wean the country off its dependence on fossil fuels.

Iran and Pakistan will finalize a contract for the $7 billion Iran- Pakistan gas exports project next Tuesday, with early gas delivery scheduled to begin around the end of 2015, a senior Iranian oil official told Platts.

Organic advocates note that although the review was solid, and more funding is needed to explore the effects of eating organic on preventing disease, there is plenty of concrete evidence linking the chemicals used on our food (including carcinogens, hormone disruptors, and neurotoxins) to human health problems-even in small doses comparable to that found on food, in food, and around the home in common chemical bug and weed killers

The Rabbinical Council of Judea and Samaria issued a statement Thursday in which it said that the results of the incident in which Israel intercepted a flotilla trying to break the naval blockade of Gaza seem like the Biblical description of "the beginning of the Gog and Magog process where the world is against us, but which ends with the third and final redemption….

The nation's local jail population is declining for the first time since the federal government began keeping count, reflecting what some experts say is a growing belief that jails are housing too many people who do not belong there.

E. coli is a major problem for the food industry and a risk to public health. Now, lawmakers are considering passing a law that would ramp up FDA oversight of food safety. The regulations are still in the works, but already strong opposition is building among local farmers. “Their argument is it’s nice to have small farms but food safety comes first,” said Ron Smolowitz of Coonamessett Farm in Falmouth. “I’m asking the public to think about that.”

Sogin is director of the MBL's Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution. He will use the ION sequencer to develop technology for water-quality monitoring, in order to more accurately and rapidly identify both the source and extent of contamination from sources such as human sewage and agricultural run-off.

As part of its most comprehensive study of climate change to date, the National Research Council recently issued three reports emphasizing why the U.S. should act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop a national strategy to adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change.

A new class of investors in the renewable energy sector is emerging, who could bring increased competition in the race to secure project finance, the renewable services director at consultancy WSP Environment and Energy said on Tuesday.

Imagine a material that appears to be the size of a sugar cube, but when you unfold it, you discover it has the surface area of a football field. Besides its unbelievable surface area, this substance can also be tweaked to absorb specific molecules. Such materials are called metal-organic frameworks, and could be ideal candidates for filtering the carbon out of smoke stack emissions.

A senior Pyongyang official has warned that the Korean peninsula could see "all-out war" as tensions mount from North Korea's believed sinking of a South Korean warship.

Tritium leaks discovered at two nuclear-powered plants across the nation have contributed to a review by U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on how the federal agency may improve its approach in dealing with groundwater contamination.

A massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico should fuel a renewed push for safety, not less offshore drilling, according to a University of Illinois expert who wrote a six-volume book series on marine pollution.

After four consecutive days below $70/barrel, OPEC's crude basket on May 27 climbed back into the $70-$80/b range the oil producer group has adopted as an informal target.

In just three weeks, the basket had plummeted by more than $17 to $66.84/b on May 25 from $84.16/b on May 4.

Tensions are flaring after Brazil's approval of the Belo Monte dam project last month to divert the flow of the Xingu River. The dam, which will be the world's third larges, will flood 500 square miles of rainforest, lead to the removal of at least 12,000 people in the region, and upturn the lives of 45,000 indigenous people who depend on the Xingu. After fighting the construction of the dam for nearly thirty years, indigenous groups are beginning to talk of a last stand.

An estimated 7,300 megawatts (MW) of new solar photovoltaic (PV) power capacity was installed in 2009—20 percent more than was added in 2008. With this record addition, global installed PV capacity surpassed 21,000 megawatts, producing enough power to satisfy the annual electricity use of about 5.5 million households.

Solar Activity Forecast: Solar activity is expected to remain at very low levels with a slight chance for C-class events for the next three days (04-06 June). The geomagnetic field ranged from quiet to active levels at mid latitudes with isolated storm periods from 0900Z-1500Z at high latitudes. Observations from the ACE spacecraft indicate a continuation of a high speed solar wind stream, with an increase in solar wind speed from 450 km/s to 550 km/s.

Blume’s book explores how the world would be a drastically different place were people to begin using alcohol as fuel. “Alcohol reverses global warming, air pollution would cease to exist in cities and wealth would be redistributed,” he says. Blume isn’t a soapbox environmentalist—he actually practices what he preaches.

...the staff of the Senate Committee on Aging, led by Senator Kohl (D-WI), was preparing a surprise ambush of dietary supplements in a Senate hearing held last Wednesday. We were right. But we didn’t anticipate how seriously distorted the major media news stories would be.

Shell is suspending current activity on two deepwater Gulf of Mexico wells, following the US government's six-month moratorium on drilling in waters below 500 feet because of the Macondo well blowout and spill, the company said Wednesday.

The Sierra Club gave the EPA official notice Wednesday that the federal agency has 60 days to make Texas comply with the Clean Air Act or it will be sued in federal court.

Oil services giant Halliburton expects deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico could take one to two years to return to even half of its April 2010 level, following the six-month moratorium on deepwater activity imposed last week by US regulators, a top company official said June 2.

California, United States -- Government preparations for geothermal land leasing and for project environmental studies are progressing in California, thanks to coordinated efforts by a host of federal, state and local authorities.

Already ravaged by hurricanes and erosion, coastal Louisiana tribes are now suffering immediate threats from the infamous BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Getting government help is proving difficult for some, as many of the most harmed tribes have not been recognized by the federal government.

Trains might be a reasonably cheap transport option - but rail infrastructure is very costly to build. Monorail, maglev systems and high speed rail are more expensive again - and prices really skyrocket when you have to build bridges, tunnels and winding mountain routes, or cover difficult terrain.

University of Sheffield student Jon Leary was required to “make something useful out of rubbish” as part of his dissertation. What he ended up doing was transforming lives. As part of his studies as a Mechanical Engineering major, Leary spent four months in Guatemala. There, he introduced the locals to his bicibomba movil, a mobile bicycle-powered water pump. Now, using cast-off bicycles and discarded pumps, Guatemalan farmers can irrigate their land much more easily and effectively than ever before.

Gooey blobs of oil tar washed ashore in growing numbers Friday on the white-sand beaches of Florida's Gulf Islands National Seashore as a slick from the BP spill approached the state's western Panhandle region.

Conspicuously missing from the bill are any effective measures to reduce greenhouse gases in the food and farming sector, which is responsible for up to 30% of the world's climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases. The American Power Act could make a positive impact on climate change by:

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster, the Massey, West Virginia coal mine accident, the Tennessee coal ash disaster in 2008, the BP oil refinery disaster in Texas in 2006, and countless other fossil fuel disasters are finally having an effect on public opinion.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is carrying out one of the biggest power grabs in American history. The agency has positioned itself to regulate fuel economy, set climate policy for the nation and amend the Clean Air Act–powers never delegated to it by Congress. It has done this by declaring greenhouse gas emissions a danger to public health and welfare, in a proceeding known as the “endangerment finding.”

The reaction to the Gulf spill shows how addicted to oil we are. Although people are universally horrified, they react by trying to think of ways to more safely perpetuate oil drilling and the like.

Long before organic food was a fashionable eco-trend, J.I. Rodale—who in 1930 founded Rodale Inc., publisher of Women's Health—began cultivating the organic movement. In 1942, he launched Organic Farming and Gardening magazine, and five years later, he created a nonprofit (now known as the Rodale Institute) to research the benefits of organic agriculture.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has expanded some boundaries of the closed fishing area in the Gulf of Mexico to capture portions of the slick moving beyond the current boundaries — the most significant expansion includes an area off southwest Florida that covers waters just to the west of the Dry Tortugas.

U.S. forces deployed just 13 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) at the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, but although the potential of surveillance and combat aircraft that don't put pilots in the line of fire has always been clear, few would have predicted just how quickly this technology would transform modern warfare.

“We spent more—USD 31 billion—on foreign oil in the month of April than any other month yet in 2010. That’s more than a billion dollars a day and a sad step in the wrong direction,” said Pickens. “As the economy recovers, demand and prices will continue to increase. Instead of enriching other countries, we need to get off OPEC oil and make better use of our own abundant supply of natural gas. Using natural gas as a transportation fuel is a non-partisan issue, and now is the time to act.”

Natural gas exploration and production companies are likely to continue drilling throughout 2010 despite $4/MMBtu prompt-month prices, but market fundamentals are lining up to bring an end to that behavior, Tudor, Pickering, Holt managing director Dave Pursell said Thursday.

The US Department of Justice has opened a criminal and civil investigation into BP's Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Tuesday, vowing to prosecute the US' largest oil spill "to the full extent" of the law.

Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) yesterday released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS) in which the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 4.79 percent with an average 0.8 point for the week ending June 3, 2010, up slightly from last week when it averaged 4.78 percent. Last year at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 5.29 percent.

The US federal government will require immediate changes to offshore drilling operations while developing longer-term rules and inspection requirements as the result of a 30-day review conducted by the Interior Department.

The economic forecast is not exactly clear but that has not stopped the country's risk takers from stepping out. By all accounts, venture capital investment in the clean technology sector is starting to shine with the electric automobile sector, energy efficiency and wind and solar projects taking in the biggest shares.

The terrible oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is certainly an ongoing environmental disaster. And now it's also becoming a huge waste problem.

The White House on Wednesday approved plans to construct several large offshore sand berms that BP Plc will fund to help buffer the Louisiana coast from the giant oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana's governor said.

There are plenty of guides and lists that tell you just which kinds of produce pose the most risk in terms of toxic residues and are best eaten as certified organic . Unfortunately, the reality is that fruits and veggies make up only 10 percent of the average American's caloric intake, meaning the majority of the calories we're consuming are coming from other types of foods. And the vast majority of agricultural land in our country is growing corn and soybeans for feeding livestock and making processed foods.

It is inevitable. The muscles weaken. Hearing and vision fade. We get wrinkled and stooped. We can’t run, or even walk, as fast as we used to. We have aches and pains in parts of our bodies we never even noticed before. We get old.

Droughts in the late 20th century rival some of North Africa's major droughts of centuries past, reveals new research that peers back in time to the year 1179.

Scientists have recently found a possible source of a huge carbon dioxide burp that happened some 18,000 years ago and which helped to end the last ice age.

Energy used by the US food system accounted for 80% of the increase in American energy use between 1997 and 2002, according to a recent report from the USDA’s Economic Research Service.

Despite some notable exceptions, electric vehicles are still perceived by many as offering less than impressive performance and the looks to match. The latest EV to challenge both those preconceptions is the "Dynacar" – an experimental all-electric car that can reach a speed of 140 kmh (87 mph) in 10 seconds, and accelerate from 0 to 100 kmh (62 mph) in under an estimated 5.7 seconds.

Are the worst spill in U.S. history and images of dead birds and toxic syrup lapping at Gulf shores shocking enough to be a tipping point for energy policy and consumer behavior, however?

The disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico illustrates a pressing need for the United States to pass legislative incentives to drive investment dollars into cellulosic and algae-based biofuel facilities, biofuel industry leaders said on Thursday.

The nation’s premier public health agency knowingly used flawed data to claim that high lead levels in the District’s drinking water did not pose a health risk to the public, a congressional investigation has found.

Storms that rolled through the Fredericksburg area early yesterday may have triggered the shutdown of one of North Anna Power Station's two nuclear reactors.

"The shutdown occurred during a lightning storm," said Richard Zuercher, spokesman for Dominion power's nuclear operations.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rejected Arizona's claim that dust storms caused the high pollution readings in Phoenix in 2008, a decision which could have significant implications for the State.

The 7.8-magnitude earthquake and tsunamis that battered south-central Chile in February inflicted widespread suffering on that region’s native Mapuche. Yet for many Mapuche, the worst natural disaster to hit Chile in 50 years was just another setback in their decades of struggle to recuperate lost land and defend their culture.

At Chevron's annual shareholder meeting here today Mariana Jimenez, 71, from Ecuador told company officials and board members that oil contamination by Texaco, now a Chevron company, is destroying her community in the Amazon rainforest.

"In 1976, I lost two young children. In 1979, one of my daughters became very sick with an unknown illness on her throat and lost her voice for three months. People are still getting sick every day. There are children born with birth defects," Jimenez said.

The Center for Biological Diversity Thursday filed a lawsuit against Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Minerals Management Service to strike down the agency's exemption of 49 Gulf of Mexico drilling projects from all environmental review. The suit was filed in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is initiating a rulemaking to better protect the environment and public health from the harmful effects of sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) and basement backups. In many cities, SSOs and basement backups occur because of blockages, broken pipes and excessive water flowing into the pipes.

It was established years ago that Paxil carries a risk of suicide in children and teens, but GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has for the last 18 months been conducting a study of the antidepressant in kids as young as seven — in Japan.

The drilling of two relief wells began in May, an expensive but reliable way to intercept and cap the leaking well that ruptured with a deadly rig explosion on April 20.

In the meantime, Hayward said BP needs "to be in the mind-set of containment in the sub-sea, containment on the surface and defending the shoreline, in a very aggressive way."

U.S. government and BP officials are warning that the blown-out deepwater well feeding the catastrophic spill may not be shut off until August as the company begins preparations on a new but uncertain attempt to contain the leaking crude.

Beef produced in the United States is heavily contaminated with natural or synthetic sex hormones, which are associated with an increased risk of reproductive and childhood cancers, warns Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition.

Scientists are reporting evidence that certain ingredients in shampoo, detergents and other household cleaning agents may be a source of precursor materials for formation of a suspected cancer-causing contaminant in water supplies that receive water from sewage treatment plants. The study sheds new light on possible environmental sources of this poorly understood water contaminant, called NDMA, which is of ongoing concern to health officials.

Following a financing deal signed with Norway last week, the Southeast Asian country plans to revoke existing forestry licenses held by palm oil and timber firms to save its vast rainforests and peat lands that are seen as a carbon sink.

Talks focused on developing a multi-national enforcement strategy to tackle the growing international problem of e-waste, which poses environmental and health risks, particularly in developing countries in Africa and Asia

A top Iranian diplomat accused the United States and other nuclear powers on Thursday of creating a "deadlock" that could wreck hopes for a deal on a plan to strengthen the global anti-nuclear arms treaty.

The video clips are upsetting.

There's a big bin full of dead lambs, a piglet slipping across a filth-strewn floor in search of its mother and a calf lying dead in a shed with blood seeping from its nose and mouth.

The latest compilation of factory farming horrors assembled by the campaign group, Animal Aid, packs an emotional punch. But it also underlines the serious message that the anti-meat activists want to get across: that industrial farms can hurt humans as well.

Israel is being bombarded with lies, false and unfair allegations and sheer anti-Semitic assaults. The U.S. is doing precious little to defend its most faithful ally in the Middle East, but this is the precise moment for followers of Jesus Christ to show unconditional love and unwavering support for the Jewish State amidst this brutal onslaught.

The decision was due to have been taken Tuesday. The delay is seen as a victory for environmental groups and the Hof Hacarmel regional council that had been campaigning against locating the terminal along the central Mediterranean coast at Dor.

NASA engineers have begun building hardware for a new Landsat satellite instrument that helps monitor water consumption--an important capability in the U.S. West where precipitation is sparse and water rights are allocated--now that they have passed an independent review of the instrument's design and integration and testing methods.

The main Congress member pushing for an official apology to Native Americans for historical injustices has said his piece out loud, leaving some wondering if President Barack Obama will take a similar step.

If scientists from Mars were to study the human male’s reproductive system they would probably conclude that he is destined for rapid extinction. Compared to other mammals, humans produce relatively low numbers of viable sperm – sperm capable of making that long competitive swim to penetrate an unfertilised egg. As many as one in five healthy young men between the ages of 18 and 25 produce abnormal sperm counts.

Variation on the order of thousands to hundreds of thousands of DNA's smallest pieces -- large swaths varying in length or location or even showing up in reverse order -- appeared 4,205 times in a comparison of DNA from just four people,..

No flares were observed during the past 24 hours.Solar activity is expected to be very low. The geomagnetic field was at quiet to active levels with one reporting period at 30/2100Z of minor storm conditions. Solar wind speeds have increased through the period from 500 km/s to above 600
km/s...

Stunned victims of Tropical Storm Agatha wept by destroyed homes and rescue crews dug bodies out of mud in Guatemala on Monday after torrential rain killed at least 113 people across Central America.

Retailer Sears is launching a new campaign that aims to recycle 5 million older appliances and replace them with energy-efficient models.

Through the campaign, called "The Big Switch," Sears will haul away and recycle old kitchen and laundry appliances with the purchase and delivery of a new energy-efficient model.

Its coaxial X2 Technology demonstrator has achieved a speed of 181 knots (208 mph) in a test flight – faster than the 160-170 knot speeds generally possible with conventional helicopters and edging closer to the eventual aim of delivering 250 knot (288 mph) cruising speeds.

Customers who add solar panels to their homes may be surprised when the utility takes their brand-new, computerized "smart meter" off their house and installs an old-school meter with a spinning dial.

After all, the utilities have been heavily promoting the meters for their ability to provide hourly data on electricity usage, to automate tasks such as meter reading, and to make the power grid more capable of handling the uneven electricity generation from solar panels and windmills.

As oil from the Deepwater Horizon continues to leak off the coast of Louisiana, we are reminded that BP continues to operate Atlantis without critical safety documents.

Don't worry about stocking up on sunscreen, but our solar system may be headed for a celestial version of global warming. A new analysis suggests that in about 100 years the sun could plunge into a hot cloud of interstellar gas. The change should have no impact on our planet, but it could boost the amount of deadly radiation in space, making missions more challenging for future astronauts.

One of more than 730 paper mill workers who lost their jobs when two mills shut down in a single day, Labrie landed on his feet in Quebec's rapidly expanding wind-energy industry.

If the spillway doesn't contain the water and the landslide dam bursts, authorities fear the heavy flooding could wash away many villages, bridges and roads, affecting up to 50,000 people.

When we get angry, the heart rate, arterial tension and testosterone production increases, cortisol (the stress hormone) decreases, and the left hemisphere of the brain becomes more stimulated.

Eggs from truly organic, free-range chickens are FAR less likely to contain dangerous bacteria such as salmonella, and their nutrient content is also much higher than commercially raised eggs....But have you ever thought about what happens to these eggs AFTER they are collected?

How green can the energy produced by a biomass power plant be if it releases carbon dioxide into the air just like a coal or natural gas-fueled plant?

That's the question being raised about biomass projects...

President Obama's support with the American Jewish community is plunging due to his administration's hostility towards Israel over the past year. A full 78% of Americans Jews voted for Obama in 2008. But now a stunning new poll finds 46% of Jews are actively considering voting for someone else in 2012.

News 2010:

Find out what's going on in our area and around the World from an "energy" perspective!